Brian J. ButterworthUniversity of Colorado Boulder | CUB · Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)
Brian J. Butterworth
PhD Atmospheric Science
About
41
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (41)
The Chequamegon Heterogeneous Ecosystem Energy-balance Study Enabled by a High-density Extensive Array of Detectors 2019 (CHEESEHEAD19) is an ongoing National Science Foundation project based on an intensive field campaign that occurred from June-October 2019. The purpose of the study is to examine how the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) responds...
The Arctic marine environment plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. However, there remain large uncertainties in how sea ice affects air–sea fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2), partially due to disagreement between the two main methods (enclosure and eddy covariance) for measuring CO2 flux (FCO2). The enclosure method has appeared to prod...
Direct carbon dioxide flux measurements using eddy covariance from an icebreaker in the high-latitude Southern Ocean and Antarctic marginal ice zone are reported. Fluxes were combined with the measured water-air carbon dioxide partial pressure difference (ΔpCO2) to compute the air-sea gas transfer velocity (k, normalized to Schmidt number 660). The...
A ruggedized closed-path eddy covariance (EC) system was designed for unattended direct measurements of air-sea momentum, heat, and CO2 flux, and was deployed on the Research Vessel Icebreaker (RV/IB) Nathaniel B. Palmer (NBP), an Antarctic research and supply vessel. The system operated for nine cruises during 18 months from January 2013 to June 2...
Executive summary
• Target audience: AmeriFlux community, AmeriFlux Science Steering Committee & Department of Energy (DOE) program managers [ARM/ASR (atmosphere), TES (surface), and SBR (subsurface)]
• Problem statement: The atmospheric boundary layer mediates the exchange of energy and matter between the land surface and the free troposphere in...
The main goal of the TRacking Aerosol Convection interactions ExpeRiment (TRACER) project was to further understand the role that regional circulations and aerosol loading play in the convective cloud life cycle across the greater Houston, Texas, area. To accomplish this goal, the United States Department of Energy and research partners collaborate...
From autumn 2021 through summer 2023, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and partners conducted the Study of Precipitation, the Lower Atmosphere, and Surface for Hydrometeorology (SPLASH) campaign in the East River Watershed of Colorado. One objective of SPLASH was to observe the transfer of energy between th...
Climate change is intensifying the hydrologic cycle and altering ecosystem function, including water flux to the atmosphere through evapotranspiration (ET). ET is made up of evaporation (E) via non‐stomatal surfaces, and transpiration (T) through plant stomata which are impacted by global changes in different ways. E and T are difficult to measure...
The main goal of the TRacking Aerosol Convection interactions ExpeRiment (TRACER) project was to further understand the role that regional circulations and aerosol loading play in the convective cloud life cycle across the greater Houston, Texas area. To accomplish this goal, the United States Department of Energy and research partners collaborated...
Water is a critical resource that causes significant challenges to inhabitants of the western United States. These challenges are likely to intensify as the result of expanding population and climate-related changes that act to reduce runoff in areas of complex terrain. To better understand the physical processes that drive the transition of mounta...
Processes in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) occur at varying scales in both time and space. This chapter introduces the fundamental concepts of scale and explains in detail the two broad areas within boundary layer meteorology where this becomes important: “scale-invariance” and “scale-dependency.”
“Scale-invariance” involves coming up with w...
Long‐running eddy covariance flux towers provide insights into how the terrestrial carbon cycle operates over multiple timescales. Here, we evaluated variation in net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of carbon dioxide (CO2) across the Chequamegon Ecosystem‐Atmosphere Study AmeriFlux core site cluster in the upper Great Lakes region of the USA from 1997 to...
The Earth's surface is heterogeneous at multiple scales owing to spatial variability in various properties. The atmospheric responses to these heterogeneities through fluxes of energy, water, carbon, and other scalars are scale‐dependent and nonlinear. Although these exchanges can be measured using the eddy covariance technique, widely used tower‐b...
Plain Language Summary
Scale refers to the patterns in space and oscillations in time of features in our universe. The Earth system features a wide range of scales. Understanding the processes that explain the size, shape, regularity, and changes in those scales looms large in our science. Land‐atmosphere interaction refers to the ways that organis...
Warming of the Arctic due to climate change means the Arctic Ocean is now ice-free for longer as sea ice melts earlier and refreezes later. It remains unclear how the extended ice-free period will impact carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes due to scarcity of surface ocean CO2 measurements. Baseline measurements are urgently needed to understand how air−sea...
Structurally complex forests optimize resources to assimilate carbon more effectively, leading to higher productivity. Information obtained from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)‐derived canopy structural complexity (CSC) metrics across spatial scales serves as a powerful indicator of ecosystem‐scale functions such as gross primary productivity (...
The air-sea gas transfer velocity (K660) is typically assessed as a function of the 10-m neutral wind speed (U10n), but there remains substantial uncertainty in this relationship. Here K660 of CO2 derived with the eddy covariance (EC) technique from eight datasets (11 research cruises) are reevaluated with consistent consideration of solubility and...
The Earth's surface is heterogeneous at multiple scales owing to spatial variability in various properties. The atmospheric responses to these heterogeneities through fluxes of energy, water, carbon and other scalars are scale-dependent and non-linear. Although these exchanges can be measured using the eddy covariance technique, widely used tower-b...
The marginal sea ice zone has been identified as a source of different climate-active gases to the atmosphere due to its unique biogeochemistry. However, it remains highly undersampled, and the impact of summertime changes in sea ice concentration on the distributions of these gases is poorly understood. To address this, we present measurements of...
Sparse in situ measurements and poor understanding of the impact of sea ice on air-sea gas exchange introduce large uncertainties to models of polar oceanic carbon uptake. The eddy covariance technique can be used to produce insightful air-sea gas exchange datasets in the presence of sea ice, but results differ between studies. We present a critica...
The observing system design of multidisciplinary field measurements involves a variety of considerations on logistics, safety, and science objectives. Typically, this is done based on investigator intuition and designs of prior field measurements. However, there is potential for considerable increases in efficiency, safety, and scientific success b...
The marginal sea ice zone has been identified as a source of different climate active gases to the atmosphere due to its unique biogeochemistry. However, it remains highly undersampled and the impact of changes in sea ice concentration on the distributions of these gases is poorly understood. To address this, we present measurements of dissolved me...
Surface‐atmosphere fluxes and their drivers vary across space and time. A growing area of interest is in downscaling, localizing, and/or resolving sub‐grid scale energy, water, and carbon fluxes and drivers. Existing downscaling methods require inputs of land surface properties at relatively high spatial (e.g., sub‐kilometer) and temporal (e.g., ho...
The atmospheric boundary layer mediates the exchange of energy, matter, and momentum between the land surface and the free troposphere, integrating a range of physical, chemical, and biological processes and is defined as the lowest layer of the atmosphere (ranging from a few meters to 3 km). In this review, we investigate how continuous, automated...
Estimating sea–air CO2 fluxes in coastal seas remains a source of uncertainty in global carbon budgets because processes like primary production, upwelling, water mixing, and freshwater inputs produce high spatial and temporal variability of CO2 partial pressure (pCO2). As a result, improving our pCO2 baseline observations in these regions is impor...
The observing system design of multi-disciplinary field measurements involves a variety of considerations on logistics, safety, and science objectives. Typically, this is done based on investigator intuition and designs of prior field measurements. However, there is potential for considerable increase in efficiency, safety, and scientific success b...
Studying carbon dioxide in the ocean helps to understand how the ocean will be impacted by climate change and respond to increasing fossil fuel emissions. The marine carbonate system is not well characterized in the Arctic, where challenging logistics and extreme conditions limit observations of atmospheric CO2 flux and ocean acidification. Here, w...
Papers are invited for a new cross-journal special collection on insights in scaling land-atmosphere interactions from field experiments, data analyses, and modeling.
The observing system design of multi-disciplinary field measurements involves a variety of considerations on logistics, safety, and science objectives. Typically, this is done based on investigator intuition and designs of prior field measurements. However, there is potential for considerable increase in efficiency, safety, and scientific success b...
Surface-atmosphere interactions are traditionally in the vanguard of inter-disciplinary research, with efforts ranging from empirical studies over theoretical generalizations to computational simulations. More recently, data-intensive information discovery promises to further expand our insight into momentum, energy, water, and trace gas cycling. H...
The Arctic marine environment plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. However, there remain large uncertainties in how sea ice affects air–sea fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2), partially due to disagreement between the two main methods (enclosure and eddy covariance) for measuring CO2 flux (FCO2). The enclosure method has appeared to prod...
Thermally-driven upslope winds are one of the many different wind
patterns unique to mountainous terrain. While the general mechanics of
these winds have been widely studied, there is a lack of information on
how transitions in land cover influence these wind systems. Questions
also remain about how these wind systems affect the biological
function...
A host-specific Asian weevil, Rhinoncomimus latipes Korotyaev, was approved in 2004 for release in North America for control of mile-a-minute weed, Persicaria perfoliata (L.) H. Gross (formerly Polygonum perfoliatum L.), an invasive annual vine from Asia. The impact of R. latipes feeding on P. perfoliata was studied in field cages over a 2-year per...