Regional Carbon Fluxes and Atmospheric Carbon Dynamics in the Southern Great Plains during the 2007 CLASIC intensive

In June 2007, a regional campaign took place in the Southern Great Plains (SGP) to estimate land-atmosphere exchanges of CO2, water, and energy at 1 to 100 km scales. The primary goals of this campaign were to evaluate top-down and bottom-up estimates of regional fluxes and to understand the influence of moisture gradients, surface heterogeneity, and atmospheric transport patterns on these fluxes (and their estimation). The work was integrated with the Cloud and Land Surface Interaction Campaign (CLASIC), centered on the US DOE Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program SGP region. CO2 concentration data were collected from tower and airborne platforms. Eddy flux towers were deployed in the four major land cover types, distributed over the region's SE to NW precipitation gradient. In addition, CO2, water, and energy fluxes were observed with the Duke Helicopter Observation Platform (HOP) at various heights in the boundary layer, including in the surface layer (the few meters near the surface). One aircraft carried precise CO2, CO, and CH4 continuous measurement systems, and 14C, radon, and NOAA 12-flask (carbon cycle gases and isotopes) packages. Continuous CO2, CO, and radon concentrations, NOAA 2-flask package, and isotope diel flasks (14C, 13C, and 18O) were also collected from a centrally located 60 m tower. Flights were planned to constrain simple boundary layer budget models and to conduct Lagrangian air mass following experiments. We present these data in the context of characterizing surface carbon exchanges via bottom-up and top-down approaches. We also describe results from forward (using MM5-LSM) and inverse (using STILT) modeling to estimate regional surface carbon and energy fluxes. In addition to characterizing the influence of the land surface on the atmosphere, the aircraft data (in combination with observations of atmospheric dynamics) provides a very well characterized southern boundary condition to the NACP Mid-Continent Intensive.