Presentations and Publications Campbell, J.E., Carmichael, G.R., Chai, T., Mena-Carrasco, M., Tang, Y., Blake, D.R., Blake, N.J., Vay, S.A., Collatz, G.J., Baker, I., Berry, J.A., Montzka, S.A., Sweeney, C., Schnoor, J.L., Stanier, C.O. “Photosynthetic Control of Atmospheric Carbonyl Sulfide During the Growing Season.” Science, Vol. 322, 2008, pp. 1085-1088. Climate models incorporate photosynthesis-climate feedbacks, yet we lack robust tools for
large-scale assessments of these processes. Recent work suggests that carbonyl sulfide (COS), a
trace gas consumed by plants, could provide a valuable constraint on photosynthesis. Here we
analyze airborne observations of COS and carbon dioxide concentrations during the growing
season over North America with a three-dimensional atmospheric transport model. We successfully
modeled the persistent vertical drawdown of atmospheric COS using the quantitative relation
between COS and photosynthesis that has been measured in plant chamber experiments.
Furthermore, this drawdown is driven by plant uptake rather than other continental and oceanic
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