TITLE:
Spatial Distribution of CO2 Concentration over South America during ENSO Episodes by Using GOSAT Data
AUTHORS:
Zhongyi Sun, Xiufeng Wang, Hiroshi Tani, Guosheng Zhong, Shuai Yin
KEYWORDS:
CO2 Growth Rate, ENSO, GOSAT TANSO, South America, Spatial Distribution of CO2
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Climate Change,
Vol.5 No.1,
March
31,
2016
ABSTRACT: Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the most important greenhouse gases; its concentration and distribution have important implications on climate change. The El Ni?o Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the Earth’s strongest climate fluctuation on inter-annual time scales and has global impacts. However, to date, there is no research on how ENSO affects the spatial distribution of CO2 concentration. In this study, we used spatial CO2 data from the ENVIronmentSATellite (ENVISAT) and the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT), the long duration monthly mean atmospheric CO2 from Mauna Loa Observatory, Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) from Earth System Research Laboratory to analyze the way that ENSO affects spatial distribution of CO2 concentration in South America, which is affected by ENSO seriously. Our research revealed that monthly CO2 growth rate has a moderate, positive correlation relationship with MEI. We used geostatistics to predict and simulate the spatial distribution of CO2 and found that in south of 12°S, CO2 concentration of ENSO warm episode is lower than the one of ENSO cold and neutral episodes. ENSO impacts CO2 spatial distribution mainly in November, December, January and February; moderate-high concentration zone of ENSO warm episode more concentrates in the northern part of South America.