<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="data-paper" specific-use="SMUR" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ESSDD</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>Earth System Science Data Discussions</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ESSDD</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">1866-3591</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name></publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/essd-2026-418</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Improved estimation of net ecosystem CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; exchange over North America using LSTM-based flux upscaling (2001&amp;ndash;2021)</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Huang</surname>
<given-names>Chengcheng</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>He</surname>
<given-names>Wei</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Byrne</surname>
<given-names>Brendan</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0619-3045</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Nguyen</surname>
<given-names>Ngoc Tu</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Xiao</surname>
<given-names>Jingfeng</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff6">
<sup>6</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yang</surname>
<given-names>Hua</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff7">
<sup>7</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ciais</surname>
<given-names>Phillipe</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8560-4943</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff8">
<sup>8</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Songhan</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff9">
<sup>9</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Li</surname>
<given-names>Xing</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2206-0429</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff10">
<sup>10</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ma</surname>
<given-names>Han</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1123-7447</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff11">
<sup>11</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff12">
<sup>12</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Xu</surname>
<given-names>Peipei</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff13">
<sup>13</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhao</surname>
<given-names>Mengyao</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff13">
<sup>13</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Chen</surname>
<given-names>Hui</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0009-4233-4424</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff10">
<sup>10</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ju</surname>
<given-names>Weimin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Disaster Risk Reduction, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing  Normal University, Beijing 100875, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Zhejiang Carbon Neutral Innovation Institute &amp; Zhejiang International Cooperation Base for Science and Technology on  Carbon Emission Reduction and Monitoring, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310014, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>International Institute for Earth System Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210023, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210024, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff6">
<label>6</label>
<addr-line>Earth Systems Research Center, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff7">
<label>7</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Faculty of Geophysical Science, Beijing Normal University,  Beijing 100875, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff8">
<label>8</label>
<addr-line>Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA‐CNRS‐UVSQ, Université Paris‐Saclay, Gif‐sur‐Yvette, France</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff9">
<label>9</label>
<addr-line>Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Modern Crop Production, Key Laboratory of Crop Physiology and Ecology in Southern China, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff10">
<label>10</label>
<addr-line>School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff11">
<label>11</label>
<addr-line>JC STEM Lab of Quantitative Remote Sensing, Department of Geography, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff12">
<label>12</label>
<addr-line>International Center for China Development Studies, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff13">
<label>13</label>
<addr-line>School of Geography and Tourism, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, Anhui 241002, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>24</day>
<month>07</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>34</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Chengcheng Huang et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-418/">This article is available from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-418/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-418/essd-2026-418.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://essd.copernicus.org/preprints/essd-2026-418/essd-2026-418.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Accurate estimation of regional-scale terrestrial carbon budgets is of great importance but remains challenging. With particular advantages, the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks method shows potential in improving regional carbon budget upscaling estimations. Here, based on LSTM, we upscale regional net ecosystem carbon exchange (NEE) with available flux tower measurements and satellite land surface observations in North America. With well-established ecosystem-specific LSTMs, we produced monthly NEE at a spatial resolution of 0.1&amp;deg; &amp;times; 0.1&amp;deg; over 2001&amp;ndash;2021 (labelled as MemoryFlux). Unlike existing upscaling estimates, our dataset properly identified the Midwest Corn Belt as a region of large seasonal carbon uptake during peak growing seasons, a feature revealed by previous top-down studies and recognized as a model benchmark. Moreover, the estimated seasonal variations of NEE by MemoryFlux coincided well with those by atmospheric inversions, i.e., the ensemble mean of Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 Model Intercomparison Project (OCO-2 v10 MIP; &lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt; = 0.96, &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; &amp;lt; 0.001) and CarbonTracker2022 (CT2022) (&lt;em&gt;r &lt;/em&gt;= 0.97, &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; &amp;lt; 0.001). The mean annual NEE was estimated at -1.27 &amp;plusmn; 0.12 Pg C yr&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;, aligning more closely with the inversions (-0.83 to -0.70 Pg C yr&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;) than existing upscaling estimates (-3.30 to -1.68 Pg C yr&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;) do. In addition, our estimate plausibly captured the NEE spatial anomalies caused by all the recent extreme drought and flood events. We further confirmed that considering memory effects was critical for better indicating interannual variability and spatial anomalies of NEE induced by climate extremes. MemoryFlux provides an improved bottom-up estimation of North American NEE, largely narrowing the gap with top-down inversions. This dataset can be downloaded at &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20482274&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noopener&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20482274&lt;/a&gt; (Huang and He, 2026).</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="34"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42277453</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>