Biogeosciences www.biogeosciences.net 1726-4170 1726-4189 6 5 2009 10.5194/bg-6-807-2009 http://www.biogeosciences.net/6/807/2009/ http://www.biogeosciences.net/6/807/2009/bg-6-807-2009.html http://www.biogeosciences.net/6/807/2009/bg-6-807-2009.pdf 807 817 2009-05-15 Comparing high resolution WRF-VPRM simulations and two global CO₂ transport models with coastal tower measurements of CO₂ R. Ahmadov rahmadov@bgc-jena.mpg.de C. Gerbig R. Kretschmer S. Körner C. Rödenbeck P. Bousquet M. Ramonet Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, Hans-Knöll-Str. 10, 07745, Jena, Germany Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l-Environnement, UMR CEA-CNRS 1572, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France In order to better understand the effects that mesoscale transport has on atmospheric CO₂ distributions, we have used the atmospheric WRF model coupled to the diagnostic biospheric model VPRM, which provides high resolution biospheric CO₂ fluxes based on MODIS satellite indices. We have run WRF-VPRM for the period from 16 May to 15 June in 2005 covering the intensive period of the CERES experiment, using the CO₂ fields from the global model LMDZ for initialization and lateral boundary conditions. The comparison of modeled CO₂ concentration time series against observations at the Biscarosse tower and against output from two global models – LMDZ and TM3 – clearly reveals that WRF-VPRM can capture the measured CO₂ signal much better than the global models with lower resolution. Also the diurnal variability of the atmospheric CO₂ field caused by recirculation of nighttime respired CO₂ is simulated by WRF-VRPM reasonably well. Analysis of the nighttime data indicates that with high resolution modeling tools such as WRF-VPRM a large fraction of the time periods that are impossible to utilize in global models, can be used quantitatively and may help to constrain respiratory fluxes. 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