A regional surface carbon dioxide(CO_2) flux inversion system, the Tan-Tracker-Region, was developed by incorporating an assimilation scheme into the Community Multiscale Air Quality(CMAQ) regional chemical transport model to resolve fine-scale CO_2 variability over East Asia. The proper orthogonal decomposition-based ensemble four-dimensional variational data assimilation approach(POD-4 DVar) is the core algorithm for the joint assimilation framework, and simultaneous assimilations of CO_2 concentrations and surface CO_2 fluxes are applied to help reduce the uncertainty in initial CO_2 concentrations. A persistence dynamical model was developed to describe the evolution of the surface CO_2 fluxes and help avoid the "signal-to-noise" problem; thus, CO_2 fluxes could be estimated as a whole at the model grid scale, with better use of observation information. The performance of the regional inversion system was evaluated through a group of single-observation-based observing system simulation experiments(OSSEs). The results of the experiments suggest that a reliable performance of Tan-Tracker-Region is dependent on certain assimilation parameter choices, for example, an optimized window length of approximately 3 h, an ensemble size of approximately 100, and a covariance localization radius of approximately 320 km. This is probably due to the strong diurnal variation and spatial heterogeneity in the fine-scale CMAQ simulation, which could affect the performance of the regional inversion system. In addition, because all observations can be artificially obtained in OSSEs, the performance of Tan-Tracker-Region was further evaluated through different densities of the artificial observation network in different CO_2 flux situations. The results indicate that more observation sites would be useful to systematically improve the estimation of CO_2 concentration and flux in large areas over the model domain. The work presented here forms a foundation for future research in which a thorough estimation of CO_2 flux variability
A regional chemical transport model, RAMS-CMAQ, was employed to assess the impacts of biosphere–atmosphere CO2 exchange on seasonal variations in atmospheric CO2 concentrations over East Asia. Simulated CO2 concentrations were compared with observations at 12 surface stations and the comparison showed they were generally in good agreement. Both observations and simulations suggested that surface CO2 over East Asia features a summertime trough due to biospheric absorption, while in some urban areas surface CO2 has a distinct summer peak, which could be attributed to the strong impact from anthropogenic emissions. Analysis of the model results indicated that biospheric fluxes and fossil-fuel emissions are comparably important in shaping spatial distributions of CO2 near the surface over East Asia. Biospheric flux plays an important role in the prevailing spatial pattern of CO2 enhancement and reduction on the synoptic scale due to the strong seasonality of biospheric CO2 flux. The elevation of CO2 levels by the biosphere during winter was found to be larger than 5ppm in North China and Southeast China, and during summertime a significant depletion( 7 ppm) occurred in most areas,except for the Indo-China Peninsula where positive bioflux values were found.
