Seasonal Variations of Solar‐Induced Fluorescence, Precipitation, and Carbon Dioxide Over the Amazon

Previous studies suggested that the Amazon, the largest rainforest on Earth, changes from a CO 2 sink to a CO 2 source during the dry/fire season. However, the biospheric contributions to atmospheric CO 2 are not well understood during the two main seasons, the dry/fire season and the wet season. In this article, we utilize Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO‐2) Solar‐Induced Fluorescence (SIF) to explore photosynthetic activity during the different seasons. The spatiotemporal variability of OCO‐2 SIF, OCO‐2 CO 2 , precipitation, and burned area are investigated over the Amazon from September 2014 to December 2019. Averaging over the entire Amazon region, we found a positive temporal correlation (0.94) between OCO‐2 SIF and Global Precipitation Climatology Project precipitation and a negative temporal correlation (−0.64) between OCO‐2 SIF and OCO‐2 CO 2 , consistent with the fact that precipitation enhances photosynthesis, which results in higher values for SIF and rate of removal of CO 2 from the atmosphere above the Amazon region. We also observed seasonality in the spatial variability of these variables within the Amazon region. During the dry/fire (August–October) season, low SIF values, low precipitation, high vapor pressure deficit (VPD), large burned areas, and high atmospheric CO 2 are mainly found over the southern Amazon region. In contrast, during the wet season (January–March), high SIF values, high precipitation, low VPD, smaller burned areas, and low CO 2 are found over both the central and southern Amazon regions. The seasonal difference in SIF suggests that photosynthetic activity is reduced during the dry/fire season relative to the wet season as a result of low precipitation and high VPD, especially over the southern Amazon region, which will contribute to more CO 2 in the atmosphere during the dry/fire season.