End-of-dry-season CO2 pulses recur each year in the atmosphere above the Australian continent, a discovery made by an international research team led by environmental physicist Prof. Dr André Butz of Heidelberg University.
End-of-dry-season CO2 pulses recur each year in the atmosphere above the Australian continent, a discovery made by an international research team led by environmental physicist Prof. Dr André Butz of Heidelberg University. To investigate the carbon fluxes over Australia, the researchers studied atmospheric CO2 measurements. Their analyses show that CO2 emissions spike when heavy rain falls on dried-out soil, thus activating microorganisms in that soil. The findings suggest that dry regions have a greater influence on the variations in the global carbon cycle than previously thought.
The Australian continent is dominated by dry ecosystems and widely varying precipitation patterns. Generally, at the end of the dry season – when the first rains begin to fall – CO2 emissions over Australia rise sharply. “This effect is well-known at the local level, but it was never observed at the continental level,” states Eva-Marie Metz, a doctoral candidate in Prof. Butz’s working group at the Institute of Environmental Physics at Heidelberg University. Data on the atmospheric CO2 concentrations obtained from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) were analysed. Using the satellite data from 2009 to 2018, the scientists found that the seasonal pattern of CO2 concentrations over Australia was much more dynamic than previously assumed.
Read more at: Heidelberg University
