The impacts of modeling global CO2 concentrations with GEOS-Chem using different ocean carbon fluxes

ABSTRACT The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations caused by human activities is leading to global climate change, which poses a threat to human development and survival. This study analyzed the distribution of the ocean carbon flux with interannual changes and compared it with the climatological ocean carbon flux to deepen our understanding of carbon sources and sinks. To simulate global CO2 concentrations for the years 2008–2010, the ocean carbon flux with interannual changes and the climatological ocean carbon flux were used to drive the GEOS-Chem model, an atmospheric chemical transport model. The simulated values were compared with the CO2 concentrations at nine observation stations to explore the influence of interannual changes in the ocean carbon fluxes on the simulated CO2 concentrations. The authors found that the difference between the two simulation results was greater in the Southern Hemisphere all year, and the difference in autumn was the largest. Compared with the observations, the simulated CO2 concentration of the ocean carbon flux with interannual changes is closer to the observations, indicating that this simulation is more accurate.