Articles | Volume 25, issue 14
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7863-2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7863-2025
Research article
 | 
24 Jul 2025
Research article |  | 24 Jul 2025

Limitations in the use of atmospheric CO2 observations to directly infer changes in the length of the biospheric carbon uptake period

Theertha Kariyathan, Ana Bastos, Markus Reichstein, Wouter Peters, and Julia Marshall

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Cited articles

Barichivich, J., Briffa, K., Osborn, T., Melvin, T., and Caesar, J.: Thermal growing season and timing of biospheric carbon uptake across the Northern Hemisphere, Global Biogeochem. Cy., 26, GB4015​​, https://doi.org/10.1029/2012GB004312, 2012. a, b, c
Barichivich, J., Briffa, K. R., Myneni, R. B., Osborn, T. J., Melvin, T. M., Ciais, P., Piao, S., and Tucker, C.: Large-scale variations in the vegetation growing season and annual cycle of atmospheric CO2 at high northern latitudes from 1950 to 2011, Glob. Change Biol., 19, 3167–3183, https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.12283, 2013. a
Barlow, J. M., Palmer, P. I., Bruhwiler, L. M., and Tans, P.: Analysis of CO2 mole fraction data: first evidence of large-scale changes in CO2 uptake at high northern latitudes, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 15, 13739–13758, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-15-13739-2015, 2015. a
Barnes, E. A., Parazoo, N., Orbe, C., and Denning, A. S.: Isentropic transport and the seasonal cycle amplitude of CO2, J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 121, 8106–8124, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JD025109, 2016. a
Buermann, W., Forkel, M., O'Sullivan, M., Sitch, S., Friedlingstein, P., Haverd, V., Jain, A. K., Kato, E., Kautz, M., Lienert, S., Lombardozzi, D., Nabel, J. E. M. S., Tian, H., Wiltshire, A. J., Zhu, D., Smith, W. K., and Richardson, A. D.: Widespread seasonal compensation effects of spring warming on northern plant productivity, Nature, 562, 110–114, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0555-7, 2018. a
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The carbon uptake period (CUP) is the time period when land absorbs more CO2 than it emits. While atmospheric CO2 mole fraction measurements can be used to assess CUP changes, atmospheric transport and asynchronous timing across regions reduce the accuracy of the estimates. Forward model experiments show that only ~ 50 % of prescribed shifts in CUP timing applied to surface fluxes (ΔCUPNEE) are captured in simulated CO2 mole fraction data at monitoring sites like the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory.
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