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CO2 Weather Movies (CT2008)
The distribution of CO2 in the atmosphere is affected by sources and sinks at the earth's surface, and by atmospheric transport (principally, winds and convection). Large scale seasonal and spatial patterns in CO2 distribution can be observed directly from observations at discrete locations, but it is also quite interesting to look at the simulated global CO2 distribution. In particular, simulations like CarbonTracker can highlight coherent short term patterns due to weather itself. The movies also show the rapid zonal mixing of the atmosphere; CO2 emitted in the USA, for example, can reach Asia in a couple weeks.

Presented here are animations of CO2 concentration in the free troposphere (above the planetary boundary layer, but below the tropopause) as simulated by CarbonTracker. This layer is chosen to highlight synoptic-scale variations of CO2--specifically, transport of carbon dioxide by weather systems--without being dominated by local variations at the surface due to regional fluxes. Technically, the plotted quantity is the pressure-weighted average of dry mole fraction of CO2 in levels 7 through 11 in the TM5 model. This corresponds to about 779 hPa to 504 hPa (one hectopascal, hPa, is equal to one millibar).

The images are created by superimposing the "zoom" region 1° longitude by 1° latitude United States grid results and the intermediate 3° longitude by 2° latitude North American grid results onto the relatively coarse 6° longitude by 4° latitude global grid. No lateral interpolation is performed, so individual grid boxes can be discerned.

The movies are available in Quicktime and animated GIF format. Quicktime player software is available for Mac OS X and Windows from Apple's Quicktime page. For Linux, we recommend either MPlayer or VLC. MPlayer and VLC are both available for Linux, OS X, and Windows.

These movies were created from the netCDF CarbonTracker output using GMT, the netCDF operators and Apple's Quicktime Pro.

There are 3 projections (Hammer, Albers, Orthographic) available for each year.



2003 - Hammer
[GIF movie]

2003 - Albers
[GIF movie]

2003 - Orthographic
[GIF movie]


2004 - Hammer
[GIF movie]

2004 - Albers
[GIF movie]

2004 - Orthographic
[GIF movie]


2005 - Hammer
[GIF movie]

2005 - Albers
[GIF movie]

2005 - Orthographic
[GIF movie]