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Contrasting regional carbon cycle responses to seasonal climate anomalies across the east-west divide of temperate North America
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  • Brendan Byrne,
  • Junjie Liu,
  • A. Anthony Bloom,
  • Kevin W. Bowman,
  • Zachary Butterfield,
  • Joanna Joiner,
  • Trevor F. Keenan,
  • Gretchen Keppel-Aleks,
  • Nicholas Cody Parazoo,
  • Yi YIN
Brendan Byrne
Jet Propulsion Lab, Jet Propulsion Lab

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Junjie Liu
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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A. Anthony Bloom
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
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Kevin W. Bowman
Jet Propulsion Lab (NASA), Jet Propulsion Lab (NASA)
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Zachary Butterfield
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Joanna Joiner
NASA GSFC, NASA GSFC
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Trevor F. Keenan
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
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Gretchen Keppel-Aleks
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
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Nicholas Cody Parazoo
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Yi YIN
California Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology
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Abstract

Across temperate North America, interannual variability (IAV) in gross primary production (GPP) and net ecosystem exchange (NEE), and their relationship with environmental drivers, are poorly understood. Here, we examine IAV in GPP and NEE and their relationship to environmental drivers using two state-of-the-science flux products: NEE constrained by surface and space-based atmospheric CO2 measurements over 2010–2015 and satellite up-scaled GPP from FluxSat over 2001-2017. We show that the arid western half of temperate North America provides a larger contribution to IAV in GPP (104% of east) and NEE (127% of east) than the eastern half, in spite of smaller magnitude of annual mean GPP and NEE. This occurs because anomalies in western ecosystems are temporally coherent across the growing season leading to an amplification of GPP and NEE. In contrast, IAV in GPP and NEE in eastern ecosystems are dominated by seasonal compensation effects, associated with opposite responses to temperature anomalies in spring and summer. Terrestrial biosphere models in the MsTMIP ensemble generally capture these differences between eastern and western temperate North America, although there is considerable spread between models.
Nov 2020Published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles volume 34 issue 11. 10.1029/2020GB006598