Global application

Global application of the FluxEngine

The FluxEngine is an open source tool for calculating atmosphere-ocean gas fluxes. For this example global application of the FluxEngine, it was run for the years 1995-2009 to produce a time series global atmosphere-ocean fluxes of the gas carbon dioxide (CO₂). The partial pressure of CO₂ in sea water, pCO_2w, was derived from global measurements, whilst wind speed and sea surface temperature data were derived from satellite earth observations.

Time series of global and regional mean air-sea CO₂ fluxes in Pg C year^-1 (reproduced from section 2a of Shutler et al., 2016). The grey shaded area represents the uncertainty in the global air-sea fluxes due to the known uncertainties in the input data

This figure shows an example mean atmosphere-ocean CO₂ flux for the year 2000 :

Global annually averaged mean air-sea CO₂ flux per day in g C m^-2 day^-1 for 2000.

The OceanFlux Greenhouse Gases Evolution project are now using the FluxEngine to gain a better understanding of the variability of the oceanic sink of CO₂ and the mechanisms that drive the gas exchange.

Reference

Shutler JD, Land PE, Piolle J-F, Woolf DK, Goddijn-Murphy L, Paul F, Girard-Ardhuin F, Chapron B, Donlon CJ (2016), FluxEngine: a flexible processing system for calculating atmosphere-ocean carbon dioxide gas fluxes and climatologies, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, doi: 10.1175/JTECH-D-14-00204.1. link