LAUSR

• Drought and heat events are projected to increase in the future, making the ability to quantify how the terrestrial biosphere responds to such events increasingly important for predicting the fate of land carbon sinks and resulting atmospheric CO2 concentrations and climate. • This study looked at the impact of two drought events, one in 2011 and one in 2012, with the objective to inform the mechanistic understanding of carbon-climate interactions and improve terrestrial biosphere predictions. • The authors used satellite observations from the Greenhouse Gasses Observing Satellite (GOSAT) along with the CMS-Flux inversion modeling framework to quantify net biosphere production (NBP) and its component fluxes, including gross primary production (GPP) and respiration (Reco) over the contiguous United States (CONUS) during drought years compared to non-drought years from 2010-2015. • The 2011 drought, centered in Texas, was primarily over south CONUS, while the 2012 drought, centered in the Midwest, affected both north and south CONUS. • The study objectives include: assessing the impact of the drought events on regional NBP relative to non-drought years; attempting to identify which component flux was the driver for the NBP anomaly; and understanding how the two drought events differ in seasonal progression in terms of climate drivers and carbon flux responses. • The study also looked at the significance of drought events on carbon fluxes relative to the region’s overall carbon budget and attempted to understand general relationships between carbon flux anomalies and climate state anomalies.