Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 322, Issue 5904, Pages 1085-1088Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1164015
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- NASA Earth System Science Graduate Fellowship
- Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research
- NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research contribution to the North American Carbon Program
- NASA INTEX
- NSF Information Technology Research
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Climate models incorporate photosynthesis- climate feedbacks, yet we lack robust tools for large- scale assessments of these processes. Recent work suggests that carbonyl sulfide ( COS), a trace gas consumed by plants, could provide a valuable constraint on photosynthesis. Here we analyze airborne observations of COS and carbon dioxide concentrations during the growing season over North America with a three- dimensional atmospheric transport model. We successfully modeled the persistent vertical drawdown of atmospheric COS using the quantitative relation between COS and photosynthesis that has been measured in plant chamber experiments. Furthermore, this drawdown is driven by plant uptake rather than other continental and oceanic fluxes in the model. These results provide quantitative evidence that COS gradients in the continental growing season may have broad use as a measurement- based photosynthesis tracer.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available