A24C-01 16:00h
The Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI): Organizational Strategy for Implementing the Multi-agency, Multi-national Program
In order to meet the major goals of many national and international programs of global change and carbon research, as well as many other global and regional scientific endeavors, an integrated, regional study of northern Eurasia that will systematically address potentially critical issues of the Earth system is concurrently being developed and implemented. NASA and the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) have been collaborating toward the development of an internationally-supported Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative, or NEESPI. A NEESPI Science Plan has been produced, which prioritizes the key research that needs to be accomplished, and the next step has been to develop the organizational structures that will enable full international participation and implementation through partnership. Due to the size of Northern Eurasia and the scope of the multidisciplinary integration required at many levels, the expertise and support from many international sponsors is needed in order to achieve the comprehensive NEESPI objectives. This requires a project organizational structure that enables full voice and participation by many countries and many agencies (governmental, public and private). The study region encompasses many sovereign countries (e.g., Russia, China, Ukraine, Mongolia); and each has its own interests regarding participating with extra-nationals, and these must be understood and respected. Many countries outside of the host region have funded research programs and their own working relationships with the "host countries." The NEESPI intends to build upon these, not replace them. The overriding and guiding principals for the formal organizational structure are that at maturation of the project organization no one country, agency or organization or individual be in a position to dominate the development and implementation of the NEESPI. Rather, each having their own national, agency or other mandates and interests should desire to and work collectively toward meeting the needs of the other partners such that all partners will be able to meet their requirements (national, agency or scientific) and achieve the collective NEESPI goals. The first phase of the mature, international NEESPI will begin in 2005 with the establishment of the NEEPSI International Project Office and is expected to run for ten years.
http://neespi.gsfc.nasa.gov/
A24C-02 16:15h
Contribution of the NASA Land-Cover/Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program to the Northern Eurasia Partnership Initiative (NEESPI)
Northern Eurasia - a geographic area, which includes the territory of the Former Soviet Union, northern China and Mongolia, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe - has recently become a study area of an international, interagency program NEESPI (Northern Eurasia Partnership Initiative, http://neespi.gsfc.nasa.gov). NASA is currently the NEESPI major partner, with several NASA programs contributing to this initiative. Among them is the Land-Cover/Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program. This talk will discuss the LCLUC Program contribution to the NEESPI, in particular the start-up projects on Carbon Cycle science studies. The area of Northern Eurasia plays a major role in the global carbon budget merely due to its vast territory covered by the boreal forests and peat lands. Also, climate warming is most pronounced in this geographic area with temperature rise expected to be the greatest over the globe. This, in turn, induces natural terrestrial processes, especially in permafrost areas, to release more carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. As far as the LCLUC processes are concerned, northern Eurasia is specifically interesting due to the dramatic socio-economic shifts throughout this region during the last decade. The rapid land use changes create the possibility for large and significant biological and climatic feedbacks in this region that could be of global importance. Regionally, significant changes in land use coupled with climate change may affect various sectors, including forestry, costal zone and agricultural systems. Additionally, these processes may have direct impacts on the society, including human health issues. This talk will present the use of NASA remote sensing data in reducing uncertainties in regional carbon budget estimates in studies of northern Eurasia. Current and planned research on detection, monitoring and impacts of changes in land cover and land use in northern Eurasia will be discussed.
http://neespi.gsfc.nasa.gov
A24C-03 16:30h
Modeling and observations of atmospheric CO2 in PBL over Siberia
Coupling the ecosystem model to atmospheric transport in global scale provides a tool for the regional scale analysis of the atmospheric CO2 exchange with Siberian terrestrial biosphere, aiming at developing a regional scale inverse model of the ecosystem function and carbon flux variability. Ecosystem model simulation was conducted with daily time step at the resolution of 1x1 degree, forced by 40 years of NCEP reanalysis data with 2 global models of the ecosystem biogeochemistry: Biome-BGC and LPJ. Simplified global fire model was included in LPJ simulation. NCEP reanalysis wind data are used in the global tracer transport model, interpolated to 1x1 degree resolution. The model simulations are compared to observed CO2 variability over Siberia as well as some other continental and remote sites. The results of the simulation suggest that although coupling the daily biospheric fluxes to the transport model with given resolution fails to reproduce the short term variability (about 1 day), it produces a reasonably good correlation with observed variability when longer time scales are considered (2-5 days). The results provide a base for treating the short term (1-2 weeks) variability as signal rather than noise in the inverse model analysis of the global and regional level CO2 exchange with the atmosphere.
A24C-04 16:45h
A Method to Estimate Fire Emissions From Siberia (1998-2002)
Siberia is an essential region to consider when assessing disturbance-driven exchange of carbon between the biosphere and atmosphere. Siberia holds one of the largest pools of terrestrial carbon, and under current climate change scenarios, fire regimes are expected to intensify in terms of increases in fire frequency, extended fire season length, increased fire severity and increases in the amount of area burned. We present a method that uses satellite-derived area burned products, an ecosystems map and inventories of the carbon stored in the biomass and soils of Siberia to estimate direct carbon and species-specific emissions for 1998 through 2002. Emissions models are spatially explicit, therefore emissions released are specific to their unique ecoregions. Carbon consumption estimates range from 3.4 to 75.4 t C ha-1 for 23 ecoregions, each of which include three levels of severity. To provide a range of current and potential estimates, three scenarios are modeled that span from the traditional scenario estimate of 116 Tg C in 1999 (6.9 M ha burned) to the extreme scenario estimate of 520 Tg C in 2002 (11.2 M ha burned), which represent 5 and 20%, respectively, of the total global carbon emissions from forest and grassland burning. Mean standard scenario estimates of CO2 (555 1031 Tg), CO (43 80 Tg), CH4 (2.4 4.5 Tg), TNMHC (2.2 4.1 Tg), and carbonaceous aerosols (4.6 8.6 Tg) represent 10, 15, 19, 12 and 26%, respectively, of the global estimates from forest and grassland burning. Our results highlight the importance of ecosystem-specific carbon consumption estimates and fire severity, which can affect total direct carbon emissions by as much as 50%. Additionally in extreme fire years, total direct carbon emissions can be 37-41% greater than in normal fire years. The models also show that accounting for increased smoldering combustion in soils and peatlands results in increases in CO, CH4, and TNMHC and decreases in CO2 emitted from fire events.
A24C-05 INVITED 17:00h
Land-to-Ocean Linkage in Eurasian Hydrological System
Northern Eurasia is a large and diverse region spanning land cover types from grassland/steppe to taiga forest to tundra. Understanding the interaction of these land cover types with the regional climate and hydrologic cycle is essential for understanding the system as a whole. We investigate how the northern flowing river networks over the NEESPI domain play a critical role in connecting and combining the diverse land cover types throughout the full range in latitudes which progress as far south as 45 degrees N. To provide this hydrological perspective we employ a digital river network, STN-EASE, at 25x25km grid cell resolution created specifically for high latitude hydrological analysis. The river network provides the fundamental framework for synthesis studies based on a broad suite of measures of system behavior. Along the network these deal with in-stream travel distance, river order, and hydrological contributions of major land cover types. At basin outlets these include river discharge and aggregate totals of key hydrologic variables. The taiga forests of Northern Eurasia are the dominant land cover type in the Arctic Ocean drainage of northern Eurasia. However, when viewed through the hydrological lens we find these taiga forests play an even greater role in terms of runoff generation than would be expected by area measures alone. This suggests that the northern forests are an important feature of the Arctic as well as the global climate system and a potentially important focal point in Arctic system change.
A24C-06 INVITED 17:20h
Effects of Aerosols on the Climate and Ecosystem of Northern Eurasia: Results from Global Models
Anthropogenic aerosols could significantly affect the surface energy budget, water cycle, and climate of northern Eurasia. These aerosols arise from consumption of fossil fuels and biofuels, initiation of forest fires, and the influence of humans on land surfaces. In this talk, we present three lines of evidence from global models that man-made aerosols have altered the surface properties and climate of northern Eurasia. The model results include coupled simulations of climate change during the 19th and 20th centuries, simulations of the present-day climate and aerosol radiative forcing, and analyses of the distribution and chemical speciation of aerosols. The coupled simulations illustrate the combined influence of greenhouse gases and aerosols on the surface energy budget, surface and soil temperatures, and soil moisture. The effects of anthropogenic aerosols are isolated using global models for the present-day climate. The changes in the direct and diffuse solar radiation in the boreal forest canopy are estimated from these integrations. The radiative forcings associated with individual species, including sulfate, dust, and carbonaceous aerosols, are estimated from global chemical transport models. We conclude by discussing prospects for enhancing global models to study the interaction of dynamic vegetation, climate, and the coupled carbon cycle of this region.
A24C-07 INVITED 17:40h
Changes in Northern Eurasian Permafrost
Permafrost occupies a significant portion of Northern Eurasia. The large observed and predicted future climatic changes will inevitably change the energy and mass fluxes at the land surface and, as a result, the near-surface and subsurface physical conditions in northern Eurasia. This will trigger changes in ecosystems that will be largest in the permafrost areas because of the extreme sensitivity of the natural systems in these regions. The stability of the ecosystems in the permafrost regions relies on the stability of ice that so far holds these systems together. In losing permafrost the systems lose their stability. Thus, even if some ecosystems could avoid disintegration, their characteristics will be changed dramatically. Analysis of the long-term records of the near-surface permafrost temperature, obtained from different parts of the permafrost zone in northern Eurasia, shows a significant warming trend during the last 30 years. Ground temperature trends generally follow the trends in the air temperatures with more pronounced warming in the lower latitudes (between 55° and 65° North). This recent climate warming brought soil temperatures in Northern Eurasia to a surprisingly high level, about 1 to 3°C warmer than long-term averages. Within some areas the permafrost temperatures now are very close to 0°C and at some sites a long-term permafrost degradation already started. If recent trends continue, it will take several centuries to millennia for permafrost in the present discontinuous zone to disappear completely in the areas where it is now actively warming and thawing. However, negative consequences of this degradation will be pronounced from the very beginning because the highest ice content in permafrost usually is found in the upper few tens of meters. While the increase in permafrost temperatures may change many of its physical properties that can have some negative effects on infrastructure, the major threshold occurs when permafrost starts to thaw from its top down. At this moment, many processes (some of them very destructive) will be triggered or intensified. The most significant impacts on ecosystems, infrastructure, carbon cycle and hydrology will be observed in areas where permafrost contains a considerable amount of ground ice. Several specific examples of the past (measured) and predicted future (calculated) changes in permafrost will be discussed.