Influence of El Niño on atmospheric CO2 over the tropical Pacific Ocean: Findings from NASA's OCO-2 mission

A Chatterjee; M M Gierach; A J Sutton; R A Feely; D Crisp; A Eldering; M R Gunson; C W O'Dell; B B Stephens; D S Schimel

doi:10.1126/science.aam5776

Influence of El Niño on atmospheric CO₂ over the tropical Pacific Ocean: Findings from NASA's OCO-2 mission

Science. 2017 Oct 13;358(6360):eaam5776. doi: 10.1126/science.aam5776.

Authors

A Chatterjee^{1

2}, M M Gierach³, A J Sutton^{4

5}, R A Feely⁴, D Crisp³, A Eldering³, M R Gunson³, C W O'Dell⁶, B B Stephens⁷, D S Schimel³

Affiliations

¹ Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, MD, USA. abhishek.chatterjee@nasa.gov.
² NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office, Greenbelt, MD, USA.
³ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
⁴ NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, WA, USA.
⁵ Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
⁶ Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
⁷ National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA.

Abstract

Spaceborne observations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 are used to characterize the response of tropical atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to the strong El Niño event of 2015-2016. Although correlations between the growth rate of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation are well known, the magnitude of the correlation and the timing of the responses of oceanic and terrestrial carbon cycle remain poorly constrained in space and time. We used space-based CO₂ observations to confirm that the tropical Pacific Ocean does play an early and important role in modulating the changes in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations during El Niño events-a phenomenon inferred but not previously observed because of insufficient high-density, broad-scale CO₂ observations over the tropics.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Grants and funding

N-999999/Intramural NASA/United States