Publication Date:
2007-06-26
Description:
Measurements of midday vertical atmospheric CO2 distributions reveal annual-mean vertical CO2 gradients that are inconsistent with atmospheric models that estimate a large transfer of terrestrial carbon from tropical to northern latitudes. The three models that most closely reproduce the observed annual-mean vertical CO2 gradients estimate weaker northern uptake of -1.5 petagrams of carbon per year (Pg C year(-1)) and weaker tropical emission of +0.1 Pg C year(-1) compared with previous consensus estimates of -2.4 and +1.8 Pg C year(-1), respectively. This suggests that northern terrestrial uptake of industrial CO2 emissions plays a smaller role than previously thought and that, after subtracting land-use emissions, tropical ecosystems may currently be strong sinks for CO2.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Stephens, Britton B -- Gurney, Kevin R -- Tans, Pieter P -- Sweeney, Colm -- Peters, Wouter -- Bruhwiler, Lori -- Ciais, Philippe -- Ramonet, Michel -- Bousquet, Philippe -- Nakazawa, Takakiyo -- Aoki, Shuji -- Machida, Toshinobu -- Inoue, Gen -- Vinnichenko, Nikolay -- Lloyd, Jon -- Jordan, Armin -- Heimann, Martin -- Shibistova, Olga -- Langenfelds, Ray L -- Steele, L Paul -- Francey, Roger J -- Denning, A Scott -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2007 Jun 22;316(5832):1732-5.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO 80305, USA. stephens@ucar.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17588927" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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