Simulation of atmospheric CO2 over Europe and western Siberia using the regional scale model REMO

Abstract

The spatial distribution and the temporal variability of atmospheric CO2 over Europe and western Siberia are investigated using the regional atmospheric model, REMO. The model, of typical horizontal resolution 50 km, is part of a nested modelling framework that has been established as a concerted action during the EUROSIBERIAN CARBONFLUX project. In REMO, the transport of CO2 is simulated together with climate variables, which offers the possibility of calculating at each time step the land atmosphere CO2 fluxes as driven by the modelled meteorology. The uptake of CO2 by photosynthesis is calculated using a light use efficiency formulation, where the absorbed photosynthetically active solar radiation is inferred from satellite measurements. The release of CO2 from plant and soil respiration is driven by the simulated climate and assumed to be in equilibrium with photosynthesis over the course of one year. Fossil CO2 emissions and air–sea fluxes within the model domain are prescribed, whereas the influence of sources outside the model domain is computed from as a boundary condition CO2 fields determined a global transport model. The modelling results are compared against pointwise eddy covariance fluxes, and against atmospheric CO2 records. We show that a necessary condition to simulate realistically the variability of atmospheric CO2 over continental Europe is to account for the diurnal cycle of biospheric exchange. Overall, for the study period of July 1998, REMO realistically simulates the short-term variability of fluxes and of atmospheric mixing ratios. However, the mean CO2 gradients from western Europe to western Siberia are not correctly reproduced. This latter deficiency points out the key role of boundary conditions in a limited-area model, as well as the need for using more realistic geographic mean patterns of biospheric carbon fluxes.