Aircraft Monitoring of Surface Carbon Dioxide Exchange

Abstract

Aircraft-mounted sensors were used to measure the exchange of carbon dioxide above a cornfield, a forest, and a lake under midday conditions. Mean absorption values of 3400, 1200, and 100 milligrams of carbon dioxide per square meter per hour, respectively, are consistent with reported ground-based observations of carbon dioxide flux. Such information, gathered by aircraft, could be used to provide a quantitative evaluation of source and sink distributions of carbon dioxide in the biosphere, to establish a correlation between satellite data and near-surface measurements, and to monitor crop performance.