The importance of fossil fuel emission uncertainties for inverse modelling of CO2 sources and sinks over Europe
Abstract
Inverse modelling-derived CO2 source and sink estimates are often directly interpreted in terms of net biospheric and oceanic fluxes. Implicit is the assumption that the uncertainty of fossil fuel emissions is sufficiently small in comparison with that of other fluxes to be neglected. In Europe, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel exceed 1 TgC year, which is about an order of magnitude larger than the annual CO2 sequestration by the terrestrial biosphere for a non-anomalous year. This raises the question to what extent inversion-derived sources and sinks over Europe explicitly address the terrestrial biosphere. In framework of CarboEurope a model intercomparison experiment has been conducted to assess the importance of uncertainties in the European fossil fuel emissions and their spatiotemporal distribution. State of the art fossil fuel emission inventories with/without sub-annual variations at low and high spatial resolution have been used as input to regional and global atmospheric transport models. Model simulations have been compared at the continuous measurement sites of the European tall tower network. The differences between the simulations at these sites is used as input to inverse modelling calculations to determine the impact of fossil fuel uncertainties on inversion-derived source and sink estimates and the role of transport model uncertainties. In this presentation we will show comparisons of fossil fuel estimates and discuss how they might limit our ability to quantify the net carbon exchange of the European biosphere.
- Publication:
-
AGU Spring Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- May 2005
- Bibcode:
- 2005AGUSM.A52B..05F
- Keywords:
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- 0305 Aerosols and particles (0345;
- 4801);
- 0368 Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry;
- 0365 Troposphere: composition and chemistry;
- 0428 Carbon cycling (4806);
- 0466 Modeling