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On understanding the land–ocean CO2 contrast over the Bay of Bengal: A case study during 2009 summer monsoon

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Abstract

Ship-based observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration over the Bay of Bengal (BoB) between 17 July 2009 and 17 Aug 2009 offered an excellent opportunity to evaluate the land–ocean contrast of surface CO2 and facilitated its comparison with model simulated CO2 concentrations. Elevated values of CO2 with large variability near the coastal region and relatively low values with correspondingly lower variability over the open ocean suggest that this observed CO2 variability over the ocean essentially captures the differences in terrestrial and oceanic CO2 fluxes. Although the region under investigation is well known for its atmospheric intraseasonal oscillations of Indian summer monsoon during July and August, the limited duration of observations performed from a moving ship in a research cruise, is not able to capture any high-frequency variability of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. But band-passed sea surface temperature and wind anomalies do indicate strong intraseasonal variability over the study region during the observational period. The synoptic data, albeit quite short in duration, thus offer a clear benchmark for abrupt variability of CO2 concentration between land and ocean.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Prof. B. N. Goswami, Director, IITM, to provide an opportunity to participate in the cruise experiment. We also thank the chief scientist of the Sagar Kanya 261 for the full support during the cruise period. AIRS data is obtained from http://mirador.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/mirador/collectionlist.pl?keyword=airx3c2d. CarbonTracker data is obtained from ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/carbontracker/CO2molefractions/CO2_total/. We thank Dr. Christian Rodenbeck, MPI, Jena, Germany as well as DKRZ Hamburg for providing TM3 model computing facility. OLR data is used from NCEP reanalysis. RM gratefully acknowledges NASA PO MJO Bio-Feedback grant and the ONR DYNAMO funds.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, India

    K. Ravi Kumar, Yogesh K. Tiwari & Vinu Valsala

  2. Earth System Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Raghu Murtugudde

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  1. K. Ravi Kumar
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  2. Yogesh K. Tiwari
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  3. Vinu Valsala
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  4. Raghu Murtugudde
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Correspondence to Yogesh K. Tiwari.

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Kumar, K.R., Tiwari, Y.K., Valsala, V. et al. On understanding the land–ocean CO2 contrast over the Bay of Bengal: A case study during 2009 summer monsoon. Environ Sci Pollut Res 21, 5066–5075 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-013-2386-2

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