Abstract
Sources and sinks of the two most important greenhouse gases
CO2 and CH4 at regional to continental
scales remain poorly understood. In our previous work, the WRF-VPRM, a
weather-biosphere-online-coupled model in which the biogenic
CO2 fluxes are handled by the Vegetation Photosynthesis
and Respiration Model (VPRM), was further developed by coupling with the
CarbonTracker global CO2 simulation and incorporating
optimized terrestrial CO2 flux parameterization (Hu et
al., 2021; Hu et al., 2020). In this work, an enhanced version of
WRF-VPRM by including CH4 (referred to as WRF-GHG
hereafter) is further developed by coupling with the Copernicus
Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) CH4 global
simulation for the initial and boundary conditions and the WetCHARTs
wetland CH4 emissions and NEI2017 anthropogenic
CH4 emissions, which dominate emissions over the
contiguous United States (CONUS). Yearly WRF-GHG simulations are
conducted for year 2018 and 2019 over CONUS at a horizontal grid spacing
of 12 km to examine the impact of 2019 abnormal mid-west precipitation
on CO2 and CH4 fluxes and atmospheric
concentrations, with the simulation for 2018 serving as a baseline for
comparison, similarly to Yin et al (2020). Simulated CO2
and CH4 are evaluated using remotely sensed data from
Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON), OCO-2, TROPOMI, and
in-situ measurements from the GLOBALVIEW obspack data. WRF-GHG has been
shown to capture the monthly variation of column-averaged
CO2 concentrations (XCO2) and episodic
variations associated with frontal passages. In this work, we will show
that TCCON XCH4 shows mild seasonal variation and more
prominent episodic variations, which are captured by WRF-GHG. As a case
study, the 2019 May flood delayed growing season in mid-west and the
typical spring and summer drawdown of atmospheric CO2 by
1-3 weeks. Obspack and TROPOMI data indicate higher CH4
in the mid-west in July and August, in 2019 relative to 2018, which we
hypothesize is related to the abnormal precipitation in 2019 in the
region that induces more wetland CH4 emissions. The
WRF-GHG model significantly underestimates CH4
concentration in mid-west in summer 2019 when the WetCHARTs wetland
CH4 emissions are driven by ERA-Interim reanalysis
precipitation, which is known to be underestimated. An updated WetCHARTs
wetland CH4 emissions driven by the PRISM precipitation
data are currently being produced at JPL, which are expected to reduce
the WRF-GHG CH4 bias, as wetland fluxes are highly
sensitive to inundation from precipitation.