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Marko Scholze

Senior lecturer

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Mean European Carbon Sink Over 2010–2015 Estimated by Simultaneous Assimilation of Atmospheric CO2, Soil Moisture, and Vegetation Optical Depth

Author

  • M. Scholze
  • T. Kaminski
  • W. Knorr
  • M. Voßbeck
  • M. Wu
  • P. Ferrazzoli
  • Yann Kerr
  • A. Mialon
  • P. Richaume
  • N. Rodríguez-Fernández
  • C. Vittucci
  • J. P. Wigneron
  • S. Mecklenburg
  • M. Drusch
Show all

Summary, in English

The northern land biosphere is believed to be the main global sink of CO2, but the contribution of Europe is uncertain. While bottom-up estimates and inverse atmospheric transport studies based on atmospheric CO2 observed in situ or from space by OCO-2 point to a moderate rate of uptake, some other inversions based on remotely sensed atmospheric CO2 from GOSAT/SCIAMACHY and biomass estimates from passive microwave satellite data point to a large sink of around 1 Gt C/yr. We present results from combining both approaches in a data assimilation framework, inverting a biosphere model against in situ atmospheric CO2 and passive microwave measurements. When assimilating all observations, we estimate a European carbon sink of 0.303 ± 0.083 Gt C/yr for 2010–2015. The result agrees with other bottom-up studies and atmospheric inversions using in situ CO2 or OCO-2 observations pointing to potential data problems when using observations from GOSAT or SCIAMACHY to estimate the European CO2 sink.

Department/s

  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
  • eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration
  • MERGE: ModElling the Regional and Global Earth system

Publishing year

2019-12-03

Language

English

Pages

13796-13796

Publication/Series

Geophysical Research Letters

Volume

46

Issue

23

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

American Geophysical Union (AGU)

Topic

  • Geophysics

Keywords

  • atmospheric CO concentration
  • carbon cycle data assimilation
  • European CO sink
  • SMOS soil moisture
  • SMOS VOD

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0094-8276