Do State‐Of‐The‐Art Atmospheric CO₂ Inverse Models Capture Drought Impacts on the European Land Carbon Uptake?

The European land carbon uptake has been heavily impacted by several recent severe droughts, yet quantitative estimates of anomalies are uncertain. Atmospheric CO2 inverse models (AIMs) provide observation-based the large-scale flux dynamics, but how well they capture drought impacts on terrestrial is poorly known. Here we assessed capacity state-of-the-art AIMs in monitoring over 2001–2015 using observations environmental variability and vegetation function made comparisons with bottom-up anomalies. We found that global inversions only limited surface give divergent impacts. Regional assimilating denser Europe demonstrated some improved consistency, all capturing a reduction during 2012 drought. However, failed to caused 2015 Finally, set assimilated satellite XCO2 or variables plus better captured induced both droughts. In addition, Orbiting Carbon Observatory—2 showed good potential impacts, performances for larger-scale droughts like 2018 These results suggest may still be too sparse fully impact cycle at subcontinental scales Europe, ancillary data can used improve observational constraints atmospheric inversion systems.