Bridging the gap between atmospheric concentrations and local ecosystem measurements

This paper demonstrates that atmospheric inversions of CO2 are a reliable tool for estimating regional fluxes. We compare results of an inversion over 18 days and a 300 x 300 km 2 domain in southwest France against independent measurements of fluxes from aircraft and towers. The inversion used concentration measurements from 2 towers while the independent data included 27 aircraft transects and 5 flux towers. The inversion reduces the mismatch between prior and independent fluxes, improving both spatial and temporal structures. The present mesoscale atmospheric inversion improves by 30% the CO2 fluxes over distances of few hundreds of km around the atmospheric measurement locations. Citation: Lauvaux, T., et al. (2009), Bridging the gap between atmospheric concentrations and local ecosystem measurements, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L19809, doi: 10.1029/2009GL039574.