Ms Alina Freing
IFM-GEOMAR, Kiel, GERMANY
Topic:
Quantifying global air-sea fluxes of N2O by the inversion of oceanic observations (Report)
Host: Nicolas Gruber, ETH Zurich, Zurich (CH)
Date of STSM: 03/02/2008 to 16/02/2008
STSM code: 2230
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is an important atmospheric greenhouse gas and it is also involved in stratospheric ozone depletion. The ocean is one of the most important natural sources of atmospheric N2O. Thus it is of utmost importance to improve our understanding of the pathways and distribution of oceanic N2O and its governing factors.
However, modelling today’s global oceanic distribution of N2O and assessing the impact of global change on its pathways are biased because we are lacking an overall view of the distribution of N2O in the ocean.
The objective of our initiative is to compile a global N2O database and to compute global data fields, which can be used to improve the oceanic N2O parameterisations implemented in biogeochemical models. Thus we hope to be able to better constrain the global N2O budget and the air-sea fluxes.
The overall aim of the COST STSM was to quantify the global air-sea fluxes of N2O by inverse modelling using our data set.