“Well mixed” Carbon Dioxide Part 2: Sources and Sinks

Following from Part 1 (North vs South), this post looks at current sources and sinks for CO2.

Here are some images of surface CO2 concentration for today (June 26 in Australia) from nullschool.

Darker areas show lower CO2, lighter areas are higher.  I recommend the nullschool site!

Europe:

The industrialised Ruhr valley appears to have the highest CO2 concentration.  Paris Berlin and London are difficult to identify however.

South America (Argentina):

The high concentration appears to be from Buenos Aires- perhaps the satellite image of the CO2 is 200 km off target?

China, Korea, and Japan:

The highest concentration appears to be close to Japan’s larger cities.  Eastern China, including Shanghai and Beijing, is around 402ppm.

Southern Africa:

Kinshasa and Johannesburg are close to the high concentrations, but dry season fires could also be the cause.

Indochina:

Oddly, the high concentration is to the south west and west of Hanoi in a rural region.

USA:

A large part of the USA seems to be one vast carbon sink at the moment.  New York and Chicago areas could be associated with some higher CO2, and there are those two areas in California, one of which I identified as Los Angeles in the previous post.  Now I’m not so sure.  More later.

Kamchatka yesterday:

And today:

The Kamchatka Peninsula features many active volcanoes and that’s what I think we are seeing here.  Yesterday afternoon the concentration peaked at 509ppm and today is down a lot but the “hot spots” are still distinct.

Australia:

Again inland eastern Australia is a carbon sink with large areas under 390ppm.  Melbourne may be the cause of a 408ppm area, but where is Sydney? Brisbane? Perth? Adelaide?

Southern California:

Note San Francisco does not appear to have over high CO2.  One of the high areas is indeed over the Los Angeles area, but the other is in the mountains to the north:  Kern County to be precise, where a bushfire has broken out.  The other ‘haze’ appears to be from the Santa Barbara fire.  See this map of fire locations.

It seems to me that it is hard to identify strong sources of CO2 associated with the world’s large cities and industrial areas.  However, it is the weekend, so perhaps this will change during the coming week.  We shall see.

On the other hand, very strong sources of CO2 can be traced to volcanoes and bushfires, and also decaying vegetation in the dry season.  Sinks as we have seen are clearly associated with rapidly growing crops, grasslands, and forests.

And today the Equatorial Pacific sink appears to match the cooler water being pushed westwards by the strengthening trade winds.  See for yourself at nullschool.

I will continue to monitor these sources and sinks as the seasons progress.

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Tags: climate, CO2