Geography
Document Type
Article
Abstract
The Atmospheric Carbon and Transport (ACT)-America NASA Earth Venture Suborbital Mission set out to improve regional atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) inversions by exploring the intersection of the strong GHG fluxes and vigorous atmospheric transport that occurs within the midlatitudes. Two research aircraft instrumented with remote and in situ sensors to measure GHG mole fractions, associated trace gases, and atmospheric state variables collected 1,140.7 flight hours of research data, distributed across 305 individual aircraft sorties, coordinated within 121 research flight days, and spanning five 6-week seasonal flight campaigns in the central and eastern United States. Flights sampled 31 synoptic sequences, including fair-weather and frontal conditions, at altitudes ranging from the atmospheric boundary layer to the upper free troposphere. The observations were complemented with global and regional GHG flux and transport model ensembles. We found that midlatitude weather systems contain large spatial gradients in GHG mole fractions, in patterns that were consistent as a function of season and altitude. We attribute these patterns to a combination of regional terrestrial fluxes and inflow from the continental boundaries. These observations, when segregated according to altitude and air mass, provide a variety of quantitative insights into the realism of regional CO2 and CH4 fluxes and atmospheric GHG transport realizations. The ACT-America dataset and ensemble modeling methods provide benchmarks for the development of atmospheric inversion systems. As global and regional atmo spheric inversions incorporate ACT-America's findings and methods, we anticipate these systems will produce increasingly accurate and precise subcontinental GHG flux estimates.
Publication Title
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
Publication Date
2021
Volume
102
Issue
9
First Page
E1714
Last Page
E1734
ISSN
0003-0007
DOI
10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0300.1
Keywords
biosphere-atmosphere interaction, boundary layer, carbon cycle, greenhouse gases, inverse methods, synoptic-scale processes
Repository Citation
Davis, Kenneth J.; Browell, Edward V.; Feng, Sha; Lauvaux, Thomas; Obland, Michael D.; Pal, Sandip; Baier, Bianca C.; Baker, David F.; Baker, Ian T.; Barkley, Zachary R.; Bowman, Kevin W.; Cui, Yu Yan; Denning, A. Scott; Digangi, Joshua P.; Dobler, Jeremy T.; Fried, Alan; Gerken, Tobias; Keller, Klaus; Lin, Bing; Nehrir, Amin R.; Normile, Caroline P.; O'Dell, Christopher W.; Ott, Lesley E.; Roiger, Anke; Schuh, Andrew E.; Sweeney, Colm; Wei, Yaxing; Weir, Brad; Xue, Ming; and Williams, Christopher A., "The Atmospheric Carbon and Transport (ACT)-America Mission" (2021). Geography. 861.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_geography/861
Copyright
© Copyright 2021 American Meteorological Society (AMS). For permission to reuse any portion of this Work, please contact permissions@ametsoc.org. Any use of material in this Work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 U.S. Code § 107) or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC § 108) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a website or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. All AMS journals and monograph publications are registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (https://www.copyright.com). Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy statement, available on the AMS website (https://www.ametsoc.org/PUBSCopyrightPolicy).
Must link to published article:
https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0300.1