Evaluating humidity and sea salt disturbances on CO2 flux measurements

• Global oceans are an important sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). Therefore, understanding the air-sea flux of CO2 is a vital part in describing the global carbon balance. Eddy covariance (EC) measurements are often used to study CO2 fluxes from both land and ocean. CO2 are usually measured with infrared absorption sensors, which at the same time measure water vapor. Studies have shown that presence of water vapor fluctuations in the sampling air potentially result in erroneous CO2 flux measurements due to cross-sensitivity of the sensor. Here we compare measured CO2 fluxes from both enclosed path Li-Cor 7200 sensors and open-path Li-Cor 7500 instruments from an inland measurement site and a marine site. We also introduce new quality control criteria based upon a Relative Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI). The sampling gas in one of the Li-Cor 7200 instruments was dried by means of a multi-tube diffusion dryer so that the water vapor fluxes were close to zero. With this setup we investigated the effect that cross-sensitivity of the CO2 signal to water vapor can have on the CO2 fluxes. The dryer had no significant effect on the CO2 fluxes. We tested the hypothesis that the cross-sensitivity effect is caused by hygroscopic particles such as sea salt by spraying a saline solution on the windows of the Li-Cor 7200 instruments during the inland field test. Our results confirm earlier findings that sea salt contamination can affect CO2 fluxes significantly and confirm earlier findings, that drying the sampling air for the gas analyzer is an effective method to reduce this signal contamination.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap -- Meteorologi och atmosfärforskning (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences -- Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Meteorology

Meteorologi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)