CARVE Tower Atmospheric Gas Concentrations and Model Footprints

Hourly atmospheric concentrations of methane, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide were measured from 2012 to 2014 at a flux tower in Fox, Alaska. The dataset includes modeled background concentrations and WRF-STILT model footprints for investigating regional gas fluxes. It was produced as part of NASA's Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE).

Use Cases

• Analyzing inter-annual and seasonal variability of CH4 and CO2 fluxes in boreal Alaska using the hourly mole fraction time series.
• Validating regional atmospheric transport models with the provided WRF-STILT model footprint data.
• Investigating correlations between measured gas concentrations and meteorological drivers from the Polar WRF model fields.
• Separating local from background influences on greenhouse gas measurements using the modeled background concentration estimates.

Strengths

• Provides a continuous three-year time series from January 2012 to December 2014.
• Integrates direct tower observations with high-resolution modeled meteorological fields and transport footprints.
• Cross-platform presence on NASA Earthdata and Data.gov indicates recognized importance and curation.

Limitations

• Specific column names, row counts, and dataset size are unknown across all sources.
• Sources conflict on the last updated date, reporting both 2014-12-31 and 2026-03-13.
• License is ambiguously specified as 'other-license-specified' without further detail.

Provenance

Source

NASA's Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE).

Collection Method

Hourly measurements from a flux tower combined with outputs from the Polar WRF-STILT and PolarVPRM models.

Time Range

2012-01-01 to 2014-12-31

Freshness

2026-03-13 05:58:17.281402

Geography

Fox, Alaska (17 km north of Fairbanks), with regional influence modeled for boreal Alaska.