Interannual variability in North American ecosystems
- 1Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, United States of America (brendan.k.byrne@jpl.nasa.gov)
- 2Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan, United States of America
- 3Goddard Space Flight Center, United States of America
- 4Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, United States of America
Semi-arid ecosystems have been recognized as an important driver of interannual variability (IAV) in the growth rate of atmospheric CO2. However, the importance of these ecosystems for IAV in gross primary productivity (GPP) and net ecosystem exchange (NEE) over North America is not well characterized. In this study, we examine IAV over temperate North America using NEE constrained by surface-based and space-based atmospheric CO2 measurements over 2010–2015 and upscaled GPP from FluxSat over 2001–2017. We show that the arid west of North America provides a larger contribution to IAV in GPP and NEE than the more productive eastern half of North America. This occurs because flux anomalies in western North America are temporally coherent across the growing season leading to an amplification of GPP and NEE for wet years. In contrast, IAV in eastern North America shows seasonal compensation effects, wherein positive anomalies during April–June are compensated for by negative anomalies during July–September.
How to cite: Byrne, B., Liu, J., Bloom, A. A., Bowman, K., Butterfield, Z., Joiner, J., Keppel-Aleks, G., Parazoo, N., and Yin, Y.: Interannual variability in North American ecosystems, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-5966, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-5966, 2020
