A Global Assessment of Dissolved Organic Carbon in Precipitation

Details

• Journal Title:
  Geophysical Research Letters
• Personal Author:
  Safieddine, Sarah A. ; Heald, Colette L.
• NOAA Program & Office:
  OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; CPO (Climate Program Office)
• Description:
  Precipitation is the largest physical removal pathway of atmospheric reactive organic carbon in the form of dissolved organic carbon (DOC). We present the first global DOC distribution simulated with a global model. A total of 85 and 188 Tg C yr−1 are deposited to the ocean and the land, respectively, with DOC ranging between 0.1 and 10 mg C L−1 in this GEOS-Chem simulation. We compare the 2010 simulated DOC to a 30 year synthesis of measurements. Despite limited measurements and imperfect temporal matching, the model is able to reproduce much of the spatial variability of DOC (r = 0.63), with a low bias of 35%. We present the global average carbon oxidation state ( urn:x-wiley:00948276:media:grl56651:grl56651-math-0001) as a simple metric for describing the chemical composition. In the atmosphere, urn:x-wiley:00948276:media:grl56651:grl56651-math-0002, and the increase in solubility upon oxidation leads to a global increase in urn:x-wiley:00948276:media:grl56651:grl56651-math-0003 in precipitation with urn:x-wiley:00948276:media:grl56651:grl56651-math-0004.
• Keywords:
  Atmospheric Chemistry Carbon Precipitation (Meteorology) Atmospheric Chemistry
• Source:
  Geophysical Research Letters 44(22): 11672-11681
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL075270
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  Grant no. NA14OAR4310132
• Rights Information:
  Other
• Compliance:
  Submitted
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:a4151555b3efde4139e588defb6fb5db885b126de5f493aee9f08440d5909bc4
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/45491/noaa_45491_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 956.75 KB ]