@article{5614feb9b2564eb59f3448823aa56d75,
title = "Characterization of Regional-Scale CO2 Transport Uncertainties in an Ensemble with Flow-Dependent Transport Errors",
abstract = "Inference of CO2 surface fluxes using atmospheric CO2 observations in atmospheric inversions depends critically on accurate representation of atmospheric transport. Here we characterize regional-scale CO2 transport uncertainties due to uncertainties in meteorological fields using a mesoscale atmospheric model and an ensemble of simulations with flow-dependent transport errors. During a 1-month summer period over North America, transport uncertainties yield an ensemble spread in instantaneous CO2 at 100 m above ground level comparable to the CO2 uncertainties resulting from 48% relative uncertainty in 3-hourly natural CO2 fluxes. Temporal averaging reduces transport uncertainties but increases the influence of CO2 uncertainties from the lateral boundaries. The influence of CO2 background uncertainties is especially large for column-averaged CO2. These results suggest that transport errors and CO2 background errors limit regional atmospheric inversions at two distinct timescales and that the error characteristics of transport and background errors should guide the design of regional inversion systems.",
author = "Chen, {Hans W.} and Fuqing Zhang and Thomas Lauvaux and Davis, {Kenneth J.} and Sha Feng and Butler, {Martha P.} and Alley, {Richard B.}",
note = "Funding Information: This work was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Atmospheric Carbon and Transport (ACT)-America Mission. ACT-America is a NASA Earth Venture Suborbital 2 project funded by NASA's Earth Science Division (Grant NNX15AG76G to Penn State). The data used for providing initial and boundary conditions are publicly available and include CarbonTracker Near-Real Time v2017, provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA; ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/carbontracker/co2/CT-NRT.v2017/), and ERA-Interim, provided by the Research Data Archive (RDA) of the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Computing was performed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) where the modeling data output used in this study are archived. NCAR and TACC are supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. The locations of rawinsonde observations were obtained from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS; https://madis.ncep.noaa.gov). We thank Yue (Michael) Ying, Xinxin Ye, and Yonghui Weng for technical support, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Funding Information: This work was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Atmospheric Carbon and Transport (ACT)-America Mission. ACT-America is a NASA Earth Venture Suborbital 2 project funded by NASA's Earth Science Division (Grant NNX15AG76G to Penn State). The data used for providing initial and boundary conditions are publicly available and include CarbonTracker Near-Real Time v2017, provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA; ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/ carbontracker/co2/CT-NRT.v2017/), and ERA-Interim, provided by the Research Data Archive (RDA) of the Computational and Information Systems Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Computing was performed at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) where the modeling data output used in this study are archived. NCAR and TACC are supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. The locations of rawinsonde observations were obtained from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS; https://madis.ncep.noaa.gov). We thank Yue (Michael) Ying, Xinxin Ye, and Yonghui Weng for technical support, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright}2019. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.",
year = "2019",
month = apr,
day = "16",
doi = "10.1029/2018GL081341",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "46",
pages = "4049--4058",
journal = "Geophysical Research Letters",
issn = "0094-8276",
publisher = "American Geophysical Union",
number = "7",
}