Identification

Title

Impact of variable air-sea O₂ and CO₂ fluxes on atmospheric potential oxygen (APO) and land-ocean carbon sink partitioning

Abstract

A three dimensional, time-evolving field of atmospheric potential oxygen (APO ~O₂/N₂+CO₂) was estimated using surface O₂, N₂ and CO₂ fluxes from the WHOI ocean ecosystem model to force the MATCH atmospheric transport model. Land and fossil carbon fluxes were also run in MATCH and translated into O₂ tracers using assumed O₂:CO₂ stoichiometries. The modeled seasonal cycles in APO agree well with the observed cycles at 13 global monitoring stations, with agreement helped by including oceanic CO₂ in the APO calculation. The modeled latitudinal gradient in APO is strongly influenced by seasonal rectifier effects in atmospheric transport. An analysis of the APO-vs.-CO₂ mass-balance method for partitioning land and ocean carbon sinks was performed in the controlled context of the MATCH simulation, in which the true surface carbon and oxygen fluxes were known exactly. This analysis suggests uncertainty of up to ±0.2 PgC in the inferred sinks due to variability associated with sparse atmospheric sampling. It also shows that interannual variability in oceanic O₂ fluxes can cause large errors in the sink partitioning when the method is applied over short timescales. However, when decadal or longer averages are used, the variability in the oceanic O₂ flux is relatively small, allowing carbon sinks to be partitioned to within a standard deviation of 0.1 Pg C/yr of the true values, provided one has an accurate estimate of long-term mean O₂ outgassing.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7hh6k8v

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2008-06-02T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact