Contrasting carbon cycle responses of the tropical continents to the 2015–2016 El Niño

Junjie Liu, Kevin W. Bowman, David S. Schimel, Nicolas C. Parazoo, Zhe Jiang, Meemong Lee, A. Anthony Bloom, Debra Wunch, Christian Frankenberg, Ying Sun, Christopher W. O’Dell, Kevin Gurney, Dimitris Menemenlis, Michelle Gierach, David Crisp, Annmarie Eldering

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

303 Scopus citations

Abstract

The 2015–2016 El Niño led to historically high temperatures and low precipitation over the tropics, while the growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) was the largest on record. Here we quantify the response of tropical net biosphere exchange, gross primary production, biomass burning, and respiration to these climate anomalies by assimilating column CO2, solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence, and carbon monoxide observations from multiple satellites. Relative to the 2011 La Niña, the pantropical biosphere released 2.5 ± 0.34 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere in 2015, consisting of approximately even contributions from three tropical continents but dominated by diverse carbon exchange processes. The heterogeneity of the carbon-exchange processes indicated here challenges previous studies that suggested that a single dominant process determines carbon cycle interannual variability.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbereaam5690
JournalScience
Volume358
Issue number6360
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 13 2017

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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