Regional CO2 fluxes for eastern Amazonia derived from aircraft vertical profiles

We have determined regional scale (~105 - 106 km2) CO2 fluxes using atmospheric measurements from aircraft vertical profiles over eastern Amazonia (site SAN: 02°51'S; 54°57'W). Profiles started December 2000 and have continued through 2008. 17 air samples per profile were collected aboard light aircraft between the surface and 4-5 km using the NOAA/ESRL semi- automatic portable flask package. We use a column integration technique to determine the CO2 flux for each vertical profile, where the measured CO2 profile is differenced from a CO2 background, which was determined using co-measured SF6 as a transport tracer. Two NOAA/ESRL background sites, Ascension Island (ASC) located in the Atlantic Ocean (8°S, 14°W) and Barbados (RPB) located in the Atlantic Ocean (12°N, 59°W) were used to calculate the fractions of air arriving at the sites studied. Back trajectories from the HYSPLIT model were calculated for every profile every 500m of altitude to determine the time the air mass took to travel between the coast and SAN. The observed flux, which is representative of that between the coast and measurement sites, averaged -0.03 ± 1.5 g C m-2day-1 for the wet season and 0.3 ± 0.9 g C m-2day-1 for the dry season. The flux variability is high, probably reflecting the dynamic nature of the response of the terrestrial biosphere to environmental conditions. We have attempted to remove the influence of biomass burning from the fluxes using measurements of co-measured CO. This reduces the dry season flux to -0.04 ± 1.2 g C m- 2day-1. We will compare these results to the seasonality found in eddy covariance measurements and to that estimated from models of the terrestrial biosphere.