USGCRP Home  Research Elements & Cross-cutting Activites The Global Carbon Cycle |
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| USGCRP Home Research Elements & Cross-cutting Activites The Global Carbon Cycle |
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The Global Carbon CycleOverview Archived News Postings [June 2000 - July 2005] CCSP / USGCRP Carbon Cycle Working Group Members
Carbon Cycle Science Home Page
The Carbon Cycle. Basic background information from NASA's Earth Observatory Reference section.
Human Interactions with the Carbon
Cycle. Summary of a Workshop. |
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The U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program is making progress in understanding the changes, magnitudes, and distributions of carbon sources and sinks, the processes operating within and between major terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric carbon reservoirs, and the underlying mechanisms involved, including human activities, fossil fuel emissions, land use, and climate forcings. Program scientists are currently quantifying many of the intricate complexities and interactions between the major carbon reservoirs and climate. To execute this undertaking, Federal agencies and departments with carbon cycle interests coordinate, manage, and support the overall science and implementation plans under two major thrusts: North American Carbon Program (NACP) and Ocean Carbon and Climate Change (OCCC) Program. As these science programs mature and generate needed carbon observations, field and experimental results are being used to constrain advanced carbon models at scales from experimental sites to regions as an important means of incorporating site, regional, and global observations into global carbon models and analyses. The ultimate objective is to develop increasingly realistic and predictive coupled carbon-climate and Earth system models to provide better insight into future feedbacks and drivers between the major components of the Earth system.
In FY 2009, a new CCSPwide research priority will be initiated to quantify the magnitude and dynamics of carbon cycling of high-latitude ecosystems under abrupt climate change. In support of this research initiative, the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program will coordinate a concerted Federal effort addressing high-latitude carbon cycle research (observations, attribution, prediction, and mitigation), which will be conducted in unison with its priorities under the NACP and OCCC programs. To accomplish the carbon cycle element of the new CCSP priority at high latitudes, the interagency working group will solicit new investments and reprogram previous research investments to complement current research in order to fill gaps, and promote and augment ongoing carbon observations and networks in high-latitude lands and ocean ecosystems. The enhanced emphasis on high-latitude ecosystems will provide critical scientific information on past and current carbon dynamics of undersampled regions of North America and adjacent oceans, as well as other undersampled regions of the world, such as Antarctica and the adjacent Southern Ocean.
As research programs mature, scientific and governmental collaborations on carbon cycle science are broadening and escalating with international neighbors within North America as well as with extended Northern Hemisphere interests, international organizations, and global partners.
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Increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 and methane are major drivers of climate change. The CCSP global carbon cycle element seeks to better quantify and understand the dynamics of the global carbon cycle that determine CO2 and methane fluxes and carbon storage in terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems. Carbon cycle processes depend on climate, thus linking carbon cycle and climate change analyses is critical. Carbon cycle research involves multiple disciplines and extends over a broad range of spatial and temporal scales. Major multi-agency activities include the North American Carbon Program (NACP), an effort to describe and reduce uncertainties about the North American carbon budget and underlying processes, and the Ocean Carbon and Climate Change (OCCC) Program, a research effort aimed at determining how climate change will affect the future behavior of the oceanic carbon sink. In FY 2009, NACP will address key gaps and uncertainties in the carbon syntheses developed previously, and aspects of the OCCC and NACP will be coordinated to better quantify and understand the roles of adjacent ocean basins in the North American carbon budget. NASA will launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) to provide, for the first time, consistent atmospheric carbon observations globally from space, and carbon data assimilation systems will begin to derive estimates of carbon sources and sinks from these measurements.
