ALBERT

Description: The interaction between atmospheric chemistry and ozone (O3) in the upper troposphere–lower stratosphere (UTLS) presents a major uncertainty in understanding the effects of aviation on climate. In this study, two configurations of the atmospheric model from the Community Earth System Model (CESM), Community Atmosphere Model with Chemistry, Version 4 (CAM4) and Version 5 (CAM5), are used to evaluate the effects of aircraft nitrogen oxide (NOx = NO + NO2) emissions on ozone and the background chemistry in the UTLS. CAM4 and CAM5 simulations were both performed with extensive tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry including 133 species and 330 photochemical reactions. CAM5 includes direct and indirect aerosol effects on clouds using a modal aerosol module (MAM), whereby CAM4 uses a bulk aerosol module, which can only simulate the direct effect. To examine the accuracy of the aviation NOx-induced ozone distribution in the two models, results from the CAM5 and CAM4 simulations are compared to ozonesonde data. Aviation NOx emissions for 2006 were obtained from the AEDT (Aviation Environmental Design Tool) global commercial aircraft emissions inventory. Differences between simulated O3 concentrations and ozonesonde measurements averaged at representative levels in the troposphere and different regions are 13% in CAM5 and 18% in CAM4. Results show a localized increase in aviation-induced O3 concentrations at aviation cruise altitudes that stretches from 40° N to the North Pole. The results indicate a greater and more disperse production of aviation NOx-induced ozone in CAM5, with the annual tropospheric mean O3 perturbation of 1.2 ppb (2.4%) for CAM5 and 1.0 ppb (1.9%) for CAM4. The annual mean O3 perturbation peaks at about 8.2 ppb (6.4%) and 8.8 ppb (5.2%) in CAM5 and CAM4, respectively. Aviation emissions also result in increased hydroxyl radical (OH) concentrations and methane (CH4) loss rates, reducing the tropospheric methane lifetime in CAM5 and CAM4 by 1.69 and 1.40%, respectively. Aviation NOx emissions are associated with an instantaneous change in global mean short-term O3 radiative forcing (RF) of 40.3 and 36.5 mWm−2 in CAM5 and CAM4, respectively.

Description: Interannual anomalies in the sea–air carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange have been estimated from surface-ocean CO2 partial pressure measurements. Available data are sufficient to constrain these anomalies in large parts of the tropical and Northern Pacific and in the Northern Atlantic, in some areas since the mid 1980s to 2011. Global interannual variability is estimated as about 0.31 Pg C yr−1 (temporal standard deviation 1993–2008). The tropical Pacific accounts for a large fraction of this global variability, closely tied to ENSO. Anomalies occur more than 6 months later in the East than in the West. The estimated amplitude and ENSO response are consistent with independent information from atmospheric oxygen data. Despite discrepancies in detail, this both supports the variability estimated from surface-ocean carbon data, and demonstrates the potential of the atmospheric oxygen signal to constrain ocean biogeochemical processes. The ocean variability estimated from surface-ocean carbon data can be used to improve land CO2 flux estimates from atmospheric inversions.

Description: Most regional scale studies of vegetation in the Sahel have been based on Earth observation (EO) imagery, due to the limited number of sites providing continuous and long term in situ meteorological and vegetation measurement. From long time series of coarse resolution normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data a greening of the Sahel since the 1980s has been identified. The greening appears highly related to a general increase in rainfall following the severe droughts of the 1970s and 80s. In the same time period the region has experienced a drastic population boom and a resulting increase in numbers of livestock. However, it is poorly understood how commonly applied remote sensing techniques reflect the extensive influence of grazing on natural rangeland vegetation. This paper analyses time series of parameterized Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) NDVI data by comparison with data from the Widou Thiengoly test site in northern Senegal. Field data include grazing intensity, vegetation productivity, and species composition from sizeable areas suitable for comparison with moderate – coarse resolution satellite imagery. It is established that sampling plots excluded from grazing have higher Net Primary Production (NPP) and different species composition as compared to plots under controlled grazing or communal grazing. The seasonal small integrated NDVI, derived using absolute thresholds to estimate start and end of growing seasons, is identified as the parameter most strongly related to vegetation productivity for all grazing regimes. However plot-pixel comparisons demonstrates how the NDVI/biomass relationship changes due to grazing induced variation in annual plant species composition and the NDVI values for grazed plots are only slightly lower than the values observed for the ungrazed plots. Hence, average biomass in ungrazed plots since 2000 was 0.93 t ha−1, compared to 0.51 t ha−1 for plots subjected to controlled grazing and 0.49 t ha−1 for communally grazed plots, but the average integrated NDVI values for the same period were 1.56, 1.49, and 1.45 for ungrazed, controlled and communal respectively, i.e. a much smaller difference. This indicates that a grazing induced development towards less standing crop biomass and limited ability to turn additional water in wet years into biomass can cause neutral or even increasing NDVI trends over time. It is important to note that these findings are based on limited data and needs to be further verified, as it ultimately indicates that the greening of Sahel could partly be an indicator of increasingly intensified grazing.

Description: Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe datasets and a methodology to quantify all major components of the global carbon budget, including their uncertainties, based on the combination of a range of data, algorithms, statistics and model estimates and their interpretation by a broad scientific community. We discuss changes compared to previous estimates, consistency within and among components, alongside methodology and data limitations. CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production (EFF) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, respectively, while emissions from Land-Use Change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on combined evidence from land-cover change data, fire activity associated with deforestation, and models. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The mean ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) is based on observations from the 1990s, while the annual anomalies and trends are estimated with ocean models. The variability in SOCEAN is evaluated with data products based on surveys of ocean CO2 measurements. The global residual terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) is estimated by the difference of the other terms of the global carbon budget and compared to results of independent Dynamic Global Vegetation Models forced by observed climate, CO2 and land cover change (some including nitrogen-carbon interactions). We compare the variability and mean land and ocean fluxes to estimates from three atmospheric inverse methods for three broad latitude bands. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ, reflecting the current capacity to characterise the annual estimates of each component of the global carbon budget. For the last decade available (2004–2013), EFF was 8.9 ± 0.4 GtC yr−1, ELUC 0.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, GATM 4.3 ± 0.1 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN 2.6 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, and SLAND 2.9 ± 0.8 GtC yr−1. For year 2013 alone, EFF grew to 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, 2.3% above 2012, contining the growth trend in these emissions. ELUC was 0.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, GATM was 5.4 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN was 2.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 and SLAND was 2.5 ± 0.9 GtC yr−1. GATM was high in 2013 reflecting a steady increase in EFF and smaller and opposite changes between SOCEAN and SLAND compared to the past decade (2004–2013). The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 395.31 ± 0.10 ppm averaged over 2013. We estimate that EFF will increase by 2.5% (1.3–3.5%) to 10.1 ± 0.6 GtC in 2014 (37.0 ± 2.2 GtCO2 yr−1), 65% above emissions in 1990, based on projections of World Gross Domestic Product and recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy. From this projection of EFF and assumed constant ELUC for 2014, cumulative emissions of CO2 will reach about 545 ± 55 GtC (2000 ± 200 GtCO2) for 1870–2014, about 75% from EFF and 25% from ELUC. This paper documents changes in the methods and datasets used in this new carbon budget compared with previous publications of this living dataset (Le Quéré et al., 2013, 2014). All observations presented here can be downloaded from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (doi:10.3334/CDIAC/GCP_2014). Italic font highlights significant methodological changes and results compared to the Le Quéré et al. (2014) manuscript that accompanies the previous version of this living data.

Description: The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT), an activity of the international marine carbon research community, provides access to synthesis and gridded fCO2 (fugacity of carbon dioxide) products for the surface oceans. Version 2 of SOCAT is an update of the previous release (version 1) with more data (increased from 6.3 million to 10.1 million surface water fCO2 values) and extended data coverage (from 1968–2007 to 1968–2011). The quality control criteria, while identical in both versions, have been applied more strictly in version 2 than in version 1. The SOCAT website (http://www.socat.info/) has links to quality control comments, metadata, individual data set files, and synthesis and gridded data products. Interactive online tools allow visitors to explore the richness of the data. Applications of SOCAT include process studies, quantification of the ocean carbon sink and its spatial, seasonal, year-to-year and longerterm variation, as well as initialisation or validation of ocean carbon models and coupled climate-carbon models. Data coverage Repository-References: Individual data set files and synthesis product: doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.811776 Gridded products: doi:10.3334/CDIAC/OTG.SOCAT_V2_GRID Available at: http://www.socat.info/ Coverage: 79° S to 90° N; 180° W to 180° E Location Name: Global Oceans and Coastal Seas Date/Time Start: 16 November 1968 Date/Time End: 26 December 2011

Description: We report global long-term trends in surface ocean pH using a new pH data set computed by combining fCO2 observations from the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) version 2 with surface alkalinity estimates based on temperature and salinity. Trends were determined over the periods 1981–2011 and 1991–2011 for a set of 17 biomes using a weighted linear least squares method. We observe significant decreases in surface ocean pH in ~70% of all biomes and a global mean rate of decrease of –0.0018 ± 0.0004 yr-1 for 1991–2011. We are not able to calculate a global trend for 1981–2011 because too few biomes have enough data for this. In two-thirds of the biomes, the rate of change is commensurate with the trends expected based on the assumption that the surface ocean pH change is only driven by the surface ocean carbon chemistry remaining in a transient equilibrium with the increase in atmospheric CO2. In the remaining biomes deviations from such equilibrium may reflect changes in the trend of surface ocean fCO2, most notably in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, or changes in the oceanic buffer (Revelle) factor. We conclude that well-planned and long-term sustained observational networks are key to reliably document the ongoing and future changes in ocean carbon chemistry due to anthropogenic forcing.

Description: Free tropospheric aerosol was sampled at the Pico Mountain Observatory located at 2225 m a.m.s.l. on Pico Island of the Azores archipelago in the North Atlantic. The observatory (38°28'15'' N; 28°24'14'' W) is located ∼3900 km east and downwind of North America, which enables studies of free tropospheric air transported over long distances, mainly from North America. Aerosol samples collected on filters from June to October 2012 were analyzed to characterize organic carbon, elemental carbon and inorganic ion species. The average ambient concentration of aerosol was 0.9 μg m−3; on average organic aerosol contributes the majority of mass (57%), followed by sulfate (21%) and nitrate (17%). Filter-collected aerosol measurements were positively correlated (with an r2 ≥ 0.80) with continuous aerosol measurements of black carbon, aerosol light scattering and number concentration. Water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) species extracted from two aerosol samples (9/24 and 9/25) collected consecutively during a pollution event were analyzed using ultrahigh-resolution Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry. FLEXPART retroplume analysis shows the sampled air masses were very aged (average plume age 〉 12 days). Approximately 4000 molecular formulas were assigned to each of the mass spectra in the range of m/z 100–1000. The majority of the assigned molecular formulas have unsaturated structures with CHO and CHNO elemental compositions. These aged WSOC compounds have an average O / C ratio of ∼0.45, which is relatively low compared to O / C ratios of other aged aerosol and might be the result of evaporation and increased fragmentation during long-range transport. The increase in aerosol loading during the measurement period of 9/24 was linked to biomass burning emissions from North America by FLEXPART retroplume analysis and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) fire counts. This was confirmed with biomass burning markers detected in WSOC species and with the morphology and mixing state of particles as determined by scanning electron microscopy. The presence of markers characteristic of aqueous-phase reactions of biomass burning phenolic species suggests that the aerosol collected at the Pico Mountain Observatory had undergone cloud processing before reaching the site. Finally, the air masses on 9/25 were more aged (∼15 days) and influenced by marine emissions, as indicated by organosulfates and other species characteristic for marine aerosol such as fatty acids. The change in air masses for the two samples was corroborated by the changes in ozone and the non-methane hydrocarbons ethane and propane, morphology of particles, as well as by the FLEXPART retroplume simulations. This manuscript presents the first detailed molecular characterization of free tropospheric aged aerosol intercepted at a lower free troposphere remote location in the North Atlantic.

Description: The interaction between atmospheric chemistry and ozone (O3) in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) presents a major uncertainty in understanding the effects of aviation on climate. In this study, two configurations of the atmospheric model from the Community Earth System Model (CESM), CAM4 and CAM5, are used to evaluate the effects of aircraft nitrogen oxide (NOx = NO + NO2) emissions on ozone and the background chemistry in the UTLS. CAM4 and CAM5 simulations were both performed with extensive tropospheric and stratospheric chemistry including 133 species and 330 photochemical reactions. CAM5 includes direct and indirect aerosol effects on clouds using a modal aerosol module (MAM) whereby CAM4 uses a bulk aerosol module which can only simulate the direct effect. To examine the accuracy of the aviation NOx induced ozone distribution in the two models, results from the CAM5 and CAM4 simulations are compared to ozonesonde data. Aviation NOx emissions for 2006 were obtained from the AEDT (Aviation Environmental Design Tool) global commercial aircraft emissions inventory. Differences between simulated O3 concentrations and ozonesonde measurements averaged at representative levels in the troposphere and different regions are 13% in CAM5 and 18% in CAM4. Results show a localized increase in aviation induced O3 concentrations at aviation cruise altitudes that stretches from 40° N to the North Pole. The results indicate a greater and more disperse production of aviation NOx-induced ozone in CAM5, with the annual tropospheric mean O3 perturbation of 1.3 ppb (2.7%) for CAM5 and 1.0 ppb (1.9%) for CAM4. The annual mean O3 perturbation peaks at about 8.3 ppb (6.4%) and 8.8 ppb (5.2%) in CAM5 and CAM4, respectively. Aviation emissions also result in increased OH concentrations and methane (CH4) loss rates, reducing the tropospheric methane lifetime in CAM5 and CAM4 by 1.9% and 1.40%, respectively. Aviation NOx emissions are associated with a change in global mean O3 radiative forcing (RF) of 43.9 and 36.5 mW m−2 in CAM5 and CAM4, respectively.

Description: Macrophytes growing in shallow coastal zones characterised by intense metabolic activity have the capacity to modify pH within their canopy and beyond. We observed diel pH changes in shallow (5–12 m) seagrass (Posidonia oceanica) meadows spanning 0.06 pH units in September to 0.24 units in June. The carbonate system (pH, DIC, and aragonite saturation state (ΩAr)) and O2 within the meadows displayed strong diel variability driven by primary productivity, and changes in chemistry were related to structural parameters of the meadow, in particular, the leaf surface area available for photosynthesis (LAI). LAI was positively correlated to mean, max and range pHNBS and max and range ΩAr. In June, vertical mixing (as Turbulent Kinetic Energy) influenced max and min ΩAr, while in September there was no effect of hydrodynamics on the carbonate system within the canopy. Max and range ΩAr within the meadow showed a positive trend with the calcium carbonate load of the leaves, pointing to a possible link between structural parameters, ΩAr and carbonate deposition. Calcifying organisms, e.g. epiphytes with carbonate skeletons, may benefit from the modification of the carbonate system by the meadow. There is, however, concern for the ability of seagrasses to provide modifications of similar importance in the future. The predicted decline of seagrass meadows may alter the scope for alteration of pH within a seagrass meadow and in the water column above the meadow, particularly if shoot density and biomass decline, on which LAI is based. Organisms associated with seagrass communities may therefore suffer from the loss of pH buffering capacity in degraded meadows.

Description: Interannual anomalies in the sea–air carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange have been estimated from surface-ocean CO2 partial pressure measurements. Available data are sufficient to constrain these anomalies in large parts of the tropical and North Pacific and in the North Atlantic, in some areas covering the period from the mid 1980s to 2011. Global interannual variability is estimated as about 0.31 Pg C yr−1 (temporal standard deviation 1993–2008). The tropical Pacific accounts for a large fraction of this global variability, closely tied to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Anomalies occur more than 6 months later in the east than in the west. The estimated amplitude and ENSO response are roughly consistent with independent information from atmospheric oxygen data. This both supports the variability estimated from surface-ocean carbon data and demonstrates the potential of the atmospheric oxygen signal to constrain ocean biogeochemical processes. The ocean variability estimated from surface-ocean carbon data can be used to improve land CO2 flux estimates from atmospheric inversions.