Carbon Dioxide and Water Vapor Isotopes in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer

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This project is a study of the transport and dispersion of the stable isotopes of water vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). The isotopic species of interest are 18O-CO2, 18O-H2O and 13C-CO2. These isotopes offer powerful insights into the carbon and water fluxes on land. This study will explore the extent to which the local atmospheric budgets of these isotopes are linked to wind circulation on land. The primary method to be deployed is a large eddy simulation (LES) model that is dynamically coupled with the isotopic parameterization of land surface processes. LES simulations will be conducted to quantify the relationships of the surface and the entrainment isotopic fluxes to turbulent motion in the ABL. The LES calculations and the isotopic parameterization will be validated against new datasets obtained in a soybean ecosystem and on a tall tower in the Upper Midwest.The investigators plan several tasks to facilitate use of their results. Animation movies made of the LES results will be integrated into the principal investigator's graduate course on boundary layer meteorology and made available to the public on a Yale website and on YouTube. A post-doctoral fellow and a PhD student will be trained on the state of the art ABL modeling techniques. The isotope-LES model algorithm and the datasets used for model development will be made available to the public.