The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) tracks 2-3 peta-gram increase in carbon release to the atmosphere during the 2014-2016 El Niño

Prabir K Patra; David Crisp; Johannes W Kaiser; Debra Wunch; Tazu Saeki; Kazuhito Ichii; Takashi Sekiya; Paul O Wennberg; Dietrich G Feist; David F Pollard; David W T Griffith; Voltaire A Velazco; M De Maziere; Mahesh K Sha; Coleen Roehl; Abhishek Chatterjee; Kentaro Ishijima

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-13459-0

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) tracks 2-3 peta-gram increase in carbon release to the atmosphere during the 2014-2016 El Niño

Sci Rep. 2017 Oct 19;7(1):13567. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-13459-0.

Authors

Prabir K Patra¹, David Crisp², Johannes W Kaiser³, Debra Wunch⁴, Tazu Saeki^{5

6}, Kazuhito Ichii^{5

7}, Takashi Sekiya⁸, Paul O Wennberg⁹, Dietrich G Feist¹⁰, David F Pollard¹¹, David W T Griffith¹², Voltaire A Velazco¹², M De Maziere¹³, Mahesh K Sha¹³, Coleen Roehl⁹, Abhishek Chatterjee^{14

15}, Kentaro Ishijima⁸

Affiliations

¹ RCGC/IACE, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Yokohama, 236-0001, Japan. [email protected].
² Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
³ Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany.
⁴ Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada.
⁵ RCGC/IACE, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Yokohama, 236-0001, Japan.
⁶ Center for Global Environmental Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, 305-8506, Japan.
⁷ Center for Environmental Remote Sensing (CEReS), Chiba University, Chiba, Japan.
⁸ Project Team for HPC Advanced Predictions utilizing Big Data, JAMSTEC, Yokohama, 236001, Japan.
⁹ California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
¹⁰ Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany.
¹¹ National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NIWA), Lauder, New Zealand.
¹² School of Chemistry, University of Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia.
¹³ Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, Brussels, Belgium.
¹⁴ Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, MD, 21046, USA.
¹⁵ NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, 20771, USA.

Abstract

The powerful El Niño event of 2015-2016 - the third most intense since the 1950s - has exerted a large impact on the Earth's natural climate system. The column-averaged CO₂ dry-air mole fraction (XCO₂) observations from satellites and ground-based networks are analyzed together with in situ observations for the period of September 2014 to October 2016. From the differences between satellite (OCO-2) observations and simulations using an atmospheric chemistry-transport model, we estimate that, relative to the mean annual fluxes for 2014, the most recent El Niño has contributed to an excess CO₂ emission from the Earth's surface (land + ocean) to the atmosphere in the range of 2.4 ± 0.2 PgC (1 Pg = 10¹⁵ g) over the period of July 2015 to June 2016. The excess CO₂ flux is resulted primarily from reduction in vegetation uptake due to drought, and to a lesser degree from increased biomass burning. It is about the half of the CO₂ flux anomaly (range: 4.4-6.7 PgC) estimated for the 1997/1998 El Niño. The annual total sink is estimated to be 3.9 ± 0.2 PgC for the assumed fossil fuel emission of 10.1 PgC. The major uncertainty in attribution arise from error in anthropogenic emission trends, satellite data and atmospheric transport.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't