Abstract
AbstractThe air–sea flux of greenhouse gases [e.g., carbon dioxide (CO2)] is a critical part of the climate system and a major factor in the biogeochemical development of the oceans. More accurate and higher-resolution calculations of these gas fluxes are required if researchers are to fully understand and predict future climate. Satellite Earth observation is able to provide large spatial-scale datasets that can be used to study gas fluxes. However, the large storage requirements needed to host such data can restrict its use by the scientific community. Fortunately, the development of cloud computing can provide a solution. This paper describes an open-source air–sea CO2 flux processing toolbox called the “FluxEngine,” designed for use on a cloud-computing infrastructure. The toolbox allows users to easily generate global and regional air–sea CO2 flux data from model, in situ, and Earth observation data, and its air–sea gas flux calculation is user configurable. Its current installation on the Nephalae Cloud allows users to easily exploit more than 8 TB of climate-quality Earth observation data for the derivation of gas fluxes. The resultant netCDF data output files contain >20 data layers containing the various stages of the flux calculation along with process indicator layers to aid interpretation of the data. This paper describes the toolbox design, which verifies the air–sea CO2 flux calculations; demonstrates the use of the tools for studying global and shelf sea air–sea fluxes; and describes future developments.
Highlights
The climate of Earth is sensitive to the radiative impact of a number of gases and different types of particles in the atmosphere
The use of cloud-computing approaches means that the data processing is scalable, and this feature is completely transparent to the user
We urge the scientific community to use a common set of oceanic region definitions, to allow the outputs from differing studies to be compared and contrasted
Summary
The climate of Earth is sensitive to the radiative impact of a number of gases and different types of particles in the atmosphere. Similar efforts in the United States resulted in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) project Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (MEaSURES), which produced a 13-plus-year time series of global coverage multisensor surface biology datasets (Maritorena et al 2010). These successes and the classification by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) of a number of parameters discernable from space as essential climate variables prompted ESA to start their Climate Change Initiative (CCI) projects. For pCO2W the FluxEngine relies upon in situ pCO2W measurements (e.g., data from a buoy or ship) or an in situ–derived climatology of pCO2W data (e.g., T09)
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