CaltechAUTHORS
Published October 27, 2015 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Estimate of carbonyl sulfide tropical oceanic surface fluxes using Aura Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer observations

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 2. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 3. ROR icon University of California, Merced
  • 4. ROR icon Ames Research Center
  • 5. ROR icon University of Washington
  • 6. ROR icon Earth System Research Laboratory
  • 7. ROR icon Colorado State University
  • 8. ROR icon Goddard Space Flight Center
  • 9. ROR icon University of Maryland, Baltimore
  • 10. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

Quantifying the carbonyl sulfide (OCS) land/ocean fluxes contributes to the understanding of both the sulfur and carbon cycles. The primary sources and sinks of OCS are very likely in a steady state because there is no significant observed trend or interannual variability in atmospheric OCS measurements. However, the magnitude and spatial distribution of the dominant ocean source are highly uncertain due to the lack of observations. In particular, estimates of the oceanic fluxes range from approximately 280 Gg S yr^(−1) to greater than 800 Gg S yr^(−1), with the larger flux needed to balance a similarly sized terrestrial sink that is inferred from NOAA continental sites. Here we estimate summer tropical oceanic fluxes of OCS in 2006 using a linear flux inversion algorithm and new OCS data acquired by the Aura Tropospheric Emissions Spectrometer (TES). Modeled OCS concentrations based on these updated fluxes are consistent with HIAPER Pole‐to‐Pole Observations during 4th airborne campaign and improve significantly over the a priori model concentrations. The TES tropical ocean estimate of 70 ± 16 Gg S in June, when extrapolated over the whole year (about 840 ± 192 Gg S yr^(−1), supports the hypothesis proposed by Berry et al. (2013) that the ocean flux is in the higher range of approximately 800 Gg S yr^(−1).

Additional Information

© 2015. American Geophysical Union. Received 8 APR 2015. Accepted 28 AUG 2015. Accepted article online 4 SEP 2015. Published online 23 OCT 2015. This work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. King‐Fai Li was supported in part by the UCAR Jack Eddy Fellowship and by the NASA grant (NNX14AR40G) to the University of Washington. Yuk L. Yung acknowledged support by NASA grant (NNX13AK34G) to Caltech. The authors would like to acknowledge Randy Kawa for the help with the OH flux data and also thank Steve Wofsy, Elliot Atlas, Benjamin R. Miller, Fred Moore, James Elkins, and all other HIPPO, NOAA team members (the pilots, mechanics, technicians, and scientific crew) for making the HIPPO and NOAA data available. HIPPO was supported by NSF grants ATM‐0628575, ATM‐0628519, and ATM‐0628388 and by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). NCAR is supported by the NSF. The data used in this paper are archived at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and are available from the authors upon request (kl@gps.caltech.edu).

Attached Files

Published - Kuai_et_al-2015-Journal_of_Geophysical_Research_3A_Atmospheres.pdf

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Kuai_et_al-2015-Journal_of_Geophysical_Research_3A_Atmospheres.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
91255
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20181127-160003070

Funding

NASA/JPL/Caltech
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
NASA
NNX14AR40G
NASA
NNX13AK34G
NSF
ATM‐0628575
NSF
ATM‐0628519
NSF
ATM-0628388
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

Dates

Created
2018-11-28
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-16
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)