Nitrous oxide emissions from the Arabian Sea: A synthesis

[摘要] We computed high-resolution(1º latitude x1º longitude) seasonal and annual nitrous oxide (N₂O) concentration fields for theArabian Sea surface layer using a database containing more than 2400 valuesmeasured between December 1977 and July 1997. N₂O concentrations arehighest during the southwest (SW) monsoon along the southern Indian continental shelf. Annual emissions range from 0.33 to0.70 Tg N₂O and are dominated by fluxes from coastal regions during the SW and northeastmonsoons. Our revised estimate for the annual N₂O flux from the ArabianSea is much more tightly constrained than the previous consensus derived using averaged in-situ data from a smaller number of studies. However, thetendency to focus on measurements in locally restricted features in combination with insufficient seasonal datacoverage leads to considerableuncertainties of the concentration fields and thus in the flux estimates, especially in the coastal zones of the northern and eastern Arabian Sea. Theoverall mean relative error of the annual N₂O emissions from the ArabianSea was estimated to be at least 65%.

[学科分类] 大气科学