Title: Surface Biogenic Carbon Flux Priors: Providing Priors, Analyzing Error Structures, and Reducing Parameter Uncertainties
Principal Investigator: Christopher A. Williams
Funding Agency: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Better estimates of greenhouse gas sources and sinks are needed for climate management and to predict future climate. Atmospheric Carbon and Transport–America conducts airborne campaigns across three regions in the eastern United States to study the transport and fluxes of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane, and to measure how weather systems transport these greenhouse gases with the overall objective of enabling more accurate and precise estimates of the sources and sinks of these gases. Biogenic surface carbon flux prior estimates are a necessary component of the regional atmospheric inversion framework utilizing aircraft data. These surface flux priors should represent realistic spatial and temporal errors in the biological fluxes emerging from parameter uncertainty, be unbiased, and encompass the truth. This project delivers surface carbon flux priors to support regional inversions centered on aircraft campaigns and analyzes prior and posterior surface carbon fluxes to identify a reduced set of model parameters that are most consistent with the aircraft data.