A preliminary investigation of boundary layer effects on daytime atmospheric CO2 concentrations at a mountaintop location in the Rocky Mountains |
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Authors: | Stephan F.J. De Wekker Alex Ameen Guan Song Britton B. Stephens Anna G. Hallar Ian B. McCubbin |
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Affiliation: | (1) Centro Flora Autoctona (Native Flora Centre), c/o Consorzio Parco Monte Barro, via Bertarelli 11, I-23851 Galbiate (LC), Italy;(2) Department of Structural and Functional Biology, University of Insubria, via J.H. Dunant 3, I-21100 Varese, Italy; |
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Abstract: | Observations of CO2 concentration at a mountaintop in the Colorado Rockies in summer show a large diurnal variability with minimum CO2 concentrations found between 10:00 and 18:00 MST. Simulations are performed with a mesoscale model to examine the effects of atmospheric structure and large-scale flows on the diurnal variability. In the simulations initialized without large-scale winds, the CO2 minimum occurs earlier compared to the observations. Upslope flows play an important role in the presence of this early (pre-noon) minimum while the timing and magnitude of the minimum depend only weakly on the temperature structure. An increase in large-scale flow has a noticeable impact on the diurnal variability with a more gradual decrease in daytime CO2 concentration, similar to summer-averaged observations. From the idealized simulations and a case study, it is concluded that multi-scale flows and their interactions have a large influence on the observed diurnal variability. |
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