Pilot 7.1 | Global Carbon and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Pilot 7.1 | Global Carbon and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

In order for the world to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement, the scientific community of earth observation and climate science has to come together and address the main identified research gaps. In particular, it is necessary to reduce the remaining uncertainties in the global carbon cycle. Special emphasis must be put on sources and sinks of oceans and terrestrial ecosystems, in order to fully integrate the budgets for the main greenhouse gases (GHG), CO2 and CH4.

The Global Carbon Project (GCP) studies the integrated picture of the carbon cycle and other interacting biogeochemical cycles, including biophysical and human dimensions and their interactions and feedbacks. It contributes to the endeavors of UNFCCC, IPCC, GCOS, GEO by annual publication of the Global Carbon Budget (GCB) which has been established as one of the most prominent services to climate policy. It is based on observational data from various sources, that require improved sustainability and quality control, faster process towards near-real-time (NRT) data, combination of satellite and in situ observations, etc. More sophisticated products such as flux maps or integrated models will increase the accuracy of the annual GCB.

/ Objectives
  • To support the Global Carbon Project and especially its annual Global Carbon Budget exercise
  • To support COPERNICUS and its (EUMETSAT/ECMWF/Mercator Océans) DIAS platform by making use of the key datasets available there
  • To facilitate a semi-operational system providing NRT (year-1) land carbon fluxes at high spatial and temporal resolution based on integrating ecosystem measurements, remote sensing, and machine learning
  • To create a powerful merged Big Data product of several publicly available Essential Ocean Variable (EOV) Inorganic Carbon data products and data from various ocean observing systems (Argo, OceanSites, GO-SHIP, SOCONET) that will significantly reduce the uncertainty in ocean carbon sink estimates
  • To improve the separation between anthropogenic and natural carbon fluxes using satellite observations
/ Partners

ICOS ERIC with MPI-BGC, Germany, University of Bergen, Norway, University of Exeter, UK, and University of East Anglia, UK as linked third parties;

UHEL, FMI, CMCC

/ Key Users

Global Carbon Project (GCP), COPERNICUS, IOC/IODE

/ Key Datasets

For oceans: ICOS (OTC), ECMWF, ERA5, OCO-2, Sentinel 3, ENVISAT SST, ERS2 wave/wind, SMOS Salinity, SOCAT, SOCCOM.

For terrestrial ecosystems: ICOS (ETC), MODIS LST/NDVI/LAI/FPAR, OCO-2, Sentinel 3, ECMWF, ERA5.

/ ID Card
Expected outcome of the pilot

The targeted result is a draft of a service visualizing terrestrial carbon sinks (Fluxcom), ocean carbon fluxes (FluxEngine)that can be compared to a independent remote sensing based product.

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