Diurnal variation of atmospheric CO2 concentration and δ13C in an urban atmosphere during winter—role of the Nocturnal Boundary Layer

The paper presents the importance of the Nocturnal Boundary Layer in driving the diurnal variability of the atmospheric CO2 mixing ratio and the carbon isotope ratio at ground level from an urban station in India. Our observations are the first of their kind from this region. The atmospheric CO2 mixing ratio and the carbon isotopic ratio were measured for both the morning (05:30–07:30 IST) and afternoon time (16:00–18:00 IST) air samples at 5 m above ground level in Bangalore city, Karnataka State (12° 58′ N, 77° 38′ E, masl = 920 m) for a 10 day period during the winter of 2008. We observed a change of ~7% the in CO2 mixing ratio between the morning and afternoon time air samples. A stable isotope analysis of CO2 from morning samples showed a depletion in the carbon isotope ratio by ~2‰ compared to the afternoon samples. Along with the ground-based measurement of air samples, data of radiosonde measurements were also obtained from the Indian Meteorological Department to identify the vertical atmospheric structure at different time in a day. We proposed the presence or absence of the NBL as a controlling factor for the observed variability in the mixing ratio as well as its isotopic composition. Here we used the Keeling model approach to find out the carbon isotope ratio for the local sources. The local sources have further been characterized as anthropogenic and biological respiration (in %) using a two-component mixing model. We also used a vertical mixing model based on the concept of the mixing of isotopically depleted (carbon isotope) “polluted air” (PA) with isotopically enriched “free atmospheric air” (FA) above. Using this modeling approach, the contribution of FA at ground level is being estimated for both the morning and afternoon time air samples.