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A New Carbon Cycle Science Plan |
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A New Carbon Cycle Science Plan |
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The Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group welcomes Mike Kuperberg (Department of Energy) as its new chair. Kuperberg replaces Paula Bontempi (NASA), who has chaired the group since January 2008. Bontempi will remain on the CCIWG as a representative for NASA. Don Rice (National Science Foundation) has also stepped down from his position as a representative for NSF.
The Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group welcomes Dennis Hansell (University of Miami) as its new chair. Hansell replaces Richard Birdsey (US Forest Service), who has chaired the group since 2007. Also joining the CCSSG as new members are Wei-Jun Cai (University of Georgia), Kevin Gurney (Purdue University), Aslam Khalil (Portland State University), Michael Lomas (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences), Karen Seto (Yale University), and Ted Schuur (University of Florida). Rotating off of the CCSSG at the end of 2009 were Michael Behrenfeld (Oregon State University), Richard Feely (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), Bev Law (Oregon State University), Ariel Lugo (US Forest Service), and William Schlesinger (Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies).
The North American Carbon Program Scientific Steering Group welcomes several new members in 2010: Lisa Ainsworth (Agricultural Research Service), Ankur Desai (University of Wisconsin), Nancy French (Michigan Tech), Hauke Kite-Powell (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), , Gretchen Moisan (US Forest Service), Ajit Subramaniam (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory), and Jennifer Tank (University of Notre Dame). Rotating off of the NACP SSG at the end of 2009 were John Antle (Montana State University), John Baker (Agricultural Research Service), Burke Hales (Oregon State University), Linda Heath (US Forest Service), and Bev Law (Oregon State University).
The carbon cycle science community recently began an effort to update and revise the very successful 1999 A U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Plan – written by a committee chaired by Jorge Sarmiento and Steve Wofsy. The community now has an opportunity to decide how to outline and prioritize a research agenda on the carbon cycle for the next decade. Four co-chairs have been selected for this activity and an effort has been made to select a working group that represents the breadth of the U.S. carbon cycle research community. For more information about this activity, please visit our new page on Carbon Cycle Science Planning for the Next Decade.
A new high-resolution, interactive map of U.S. carbon dioxide
emissions from fossil fuels is now available on Google Earth.
With a few clicks on Google Earth, anyone can now view pollution from factories, power
plants, roadways, and residential and commercial areas for their state, county or per capita.
Individuals also can easily see how their county compares to others across the nation.
A team led by scientists at Purdue University developed the maps and system, named Vulcan
after the Roman god of fire. The system quantifies all of the carbon dioxide emissions that result
from burning fossil fuels such as coal and gasoline.
More information is available online:
The Carbon Cycle Science Working Group recently released a scoping paper outlining program goals and expected accomplishments for the next decade of US carbon cycle science. Over the next year, this document will be expanded into a full US Carbon Cycle Science Plan. If you wish to comment on this document, you may do so via the Carbon Cycle Science Planning Blog or by sending an email to CCSPlan@gmail.com.
You may also read more about the planning effort and a meeting of the Carbon Cycle Science Working Group in a recent Eos Meeting Report, published March 24 and on our Carbon Cycle Science Planning for the Next Decade page.
A meeting summary and full workshop report from the May 2008 Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry scoping workshop on Terrestrial and Coastal Carbon Fluxes in the Gulf of Mexico are now available.
The new CarboNA website is now available at http://nacarbon.org/carbona/index.htm. CarboNA is an international collaboration between Canada, Mexico, and the United States for carbon cycle science research throughout North America and adjacent coastal waters. The overall goal is to understand the temporal and regional distribution and magnitudes of carbon pools and greenhouse gas fluxes throughout North America, and how these affect and are affected by disturbances, human behavior, and climate and related changes, in order to predict future climate change and evaluate carbon related mitigation strategies and new technologies. In the United States, CarboNA comes under the auspices of the US Carbon Cycle Science Program and the Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group and includes work from both the North American Carbon Program and the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry program.
Climate change is already having visible impacts in the United States, and the choices we make now will determine the severity of its impacts in the future, according to a new and authoritative federal study assessing the current and anticipated domestic impacts of climate change. The report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, compiles years of scientific research and takes into account new data not available during the preparation of previous large national and global assessments. It was produced by a consortium of experts from 13 U.S. government science agencies and from several major universities and research institutes. With its production and review spanning Republican and Democratic administrations, it offers a valuable, objective scientific consensus on how climate change is affecting—and may further affect—the United States. More information is available from the US Global Change Research Program announcement.
The Europe-based Coordination Action Carbon Observing System (COCOS) works to improve the exchange of data sets between projects and to integrate datasets across basin and continental scales, with a view toward supporting European participation in international carbon dioxide monitoring. COCOS is organizing several workshops and small meetings over the next year (see "Workshops and small meetings" at http://www.cocos-carbon.org) and invites scientists from around the world to participate. United States-based scientists interested in attending any of these workshops or meetings should contact Roger Hanson, Director of the US Carbon Cycle Science Program, for more information (rhanson@usgcrp.gov).
European Commission. 2009. Integrated assessment of the European and North Atlantic carbon balance - key results, policy implications for post 2012 and research needs. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. [pdf]
Tarnocai, C., J.G. Canadell, E.A.G. Schuur, P. Kuhry, G. Mazhitova, and S.A. Zimov. 2009. Soil organic pools in the northern circumpolar permafrost region. Global Biogeochmical Cycles 23 (GB2023). doi:10.1029/2008GB003327. [pdf]
The Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group (CCIWG) welcomes two new members: Kathie Weathers (National Science Foundation) and Pai-Yei Whung (Environmental Protection Agency). Weathers replaces Laura Gough, who has completed her rotation at NSF and returned to University of Texas at Arlington. Roger Dahlman (Department of Energy), who served on the CCIWG since its inception, has also left the group.
The U.S. Ocean Carbon & Biogeochemistry (OCB) Project Office with co-sponsorship from the European Project on Ocean Acidification (EPOCA) is coordinating and hosting a hands-on ocean acidification short course that will convene members of the biological and chemical oceanography research communities to gain mutual insights on optimal ocean acidification experimental design. The short course will build on recommendations from the recent Ocean Acidification Best Practices Workshop in Kiel, Germany, and will provide a mechanism for educating scientists on appropriate chemical and biological techniques and protocols related to ocean acidification. The course will be held November 2-13, 2009 at the Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, MA and targets participants at the post-doctoral to junior and mid-career faculty levels. More information about the course content and an application for participation (due September 1, 2009) can be found at http://www.whoi.edu/courses/OCB-OA/.
Members of the Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group (CCSSG) recently published a Forum (discussion) paper in Eos describing the major elements of a U.S. carbon cycle observation system and highlighting current and potential weaknesses in the system.
Birdsey, R. et al. 2009. Carbon cycle observations: gaps threaten climate mitigation strategies. Eos 90(34):292. [pdf] [supplementary material]
The Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group (CCIWG) welcomes two new members: Randy Johnson (Forest Service) and Kenneth Mooney (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). Johnson will replace Allen Solomon as the US Forest Service Representative beginning in October. Mooney replaces Rik Wanninkhof as the NOAA Climate Program Office representative.
The Carbon Cycle Science Working Group recently released a recommendations summary outlining fundamental science questions, research goals, and primary program elements for the next decade of US carbon cycle science. If you wish to comment on this document, you may do so via the Carbon Cycle Science Planning Blog or by sending an email to CCSPlan@gmail.com. For more information about the Carbon Cycle Science Working Group and the plan for carbon cycle science they are developing, please see our Carbon Cycle Science Planning for the Next Decade page.
According to the latest update to the global carbon budget, published in the December 2009 issue of Nature Geoscience, the human perturbation of the carbon cycle continues to grow strongly and track near the most carbon intensive scenarios of the UN-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The economic crisis will likely have a transitional impact on the growth of CO2 emissions and an undetectable effect on the growth of atmospheric CO2 (because the much larger inter-annual variability of the natural sinks). The efficiency of the natural sinks has likeley declined during the last 60 years.
For more information, see the Global Carbon Project Carbon Budget page and news releases from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Purdue University.
The Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group welcomed Paula Bontempi (NASA) as co-chair of the group at their January 4 meeting. Bontempi replaces Roger Dahlman (Department of Energy), who had served as co-chair since 2002. Dahlman will remain on the CCIWG as the representative from DOE. Two other members of the CCIWG stepped down from their positions as agency representatives to the group, effective at the January 4 meeting: Fred Lipschultz (National Science Foundation) and David Hoffman (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is pleased to announce the publication of an updated "Guide to Best Practices for Ocean CO2 Measurements," edited by Andrew Dickson, Chris Sabine, and Jim Christian. The Guide is a revised and updated version of the 1994 Department of Energy "Handbook of Methods for the Analysis of the Various Parameters of the Carbon Dioxide System in Seawater." To download a pdf version of the Handbook or to order a hard copy, please visit the CDIAC Ocean CO2 site.
Ocean
Acidification: Towards an
Interagency Approach, part of the 2008 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Orlando, FL
Tuesday, March 4, 2008, 7:30 to
9:30 pm
For more information, contact Libby Jewett, Libby.Jewett@noaa.gov
Ocean acidification, or the reduction in global oceanic pH caused by
rising dissolved CO2 concentrations, is a rapidly emerging issue that
has garnered considerable interest from Congress, the scientific
community, and coastal managers. Over the next century, ocean
acidification is expected to reduce surface ocean pH by 0.3 0.5 units,
negatively impacting shell formation for a number of marine organisms
and ultimately affecting some of the most fundamental biological and
geochemical processes of the sea. In response, a number of US federal
agencies (e.g., NOAA, NSF, USGS, NASA) are developing programs to
address this critical issue. This town hall forum will be an
opportunity for representatives of agencies that support marine
research and academic researchers to discuss a vision for a national interagency program on ocean acidification.
Advancing the ocean acidification state-of-knowledge demands a broad
range of research, monitoring, and modeling capabilities. Some of
these capabilities may be better suited to the mission areas of
different agencies. Through cross-agency and international
coordination, we can achieve greater efficiency, leverage funding,
avoid duplicative efforts, and allow for large-scale joint funding
initiatives. Key topics of discussion will be the recent interagency
workshop report titled, Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs
and Other Marine Calcifiers: A Guide for Future Research and emerging
international ocean acidification programs with the European Union
(EU), Japan, and Korea.
The North American Carbon Program Scientific Steering Group (NACP SSG) will welcome Kenneth Davis (Pennsylvania State University) and Anthony King (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) to two-year terms as co-chairs at its February 5-6 meeting. Current chair Scott Denning (Colorado State University) will remain on the NACP SSG as past-chair.
The 2008 OCB Summer Science Workshop will take place July 21-24, 2008 in Woods Hole, MA. The focus of this year's workshop is on the following interdisciplinary themes:
Each day will focus on one theme, which will include a morning plenary session, followed by afternoon breakout sessions on more detailed sub-topics within that theme, and then a late afternoon poster session. The purpose of the breakouts is to facilitate more detailed discussions on research priorities and opportunities within each theme. A set of near- and long-term objectives will be developed, from which the OCB research community could begin to formulate ideas for single or multi-PI projects to advance the field.
Registration for the workshop is available at http://www.whoi.edu/sites/ocbworkshop2008. The registration deadline is June 10, 2008.
The Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Program is soliciting ideas for targeted workshops to promote collaborative research at the interface of ecosystem dynamics and marine biogeochemical cycles. In addition to annual summer science meetings that focus on broader interdisciplinary themes, OCB will convene targeted scoping workshops to give the research community a public venue for discussing research challenges and implementation approaches to address specific OCB research priorities. More information is available from the call for proposals.
The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) data base (Version 1.0) (Takahashi et al 2007) is now available for general public use through Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) web page: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/LDEO_Underway_Database/LDEO_home.html. More than 3 million measurements of surface water partial pressure of CO2 obtained over the global oceans during 1968 - 2006 are listed in the LDEO database, which includes open ocean and coastal water measurements. The data have been quality-controlled based on the stability of the system performance, the reliability of calibrations for CO2 analysis, and the internal consistency of data. In addition, to allow re-examination of the data in the future, a number of measured parameters relevant to pCO2 measurements are listed. The data presented in this database include the analysis of partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2), sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface salinity (SSS), pressure of the equilibration, and barometric pressure in the outside air from the ship's observation system.
The first issue of OCB News is now available from the OCB Project Office website. The newsletter highlights science, education & outreach, program updates, and OCB-related activities.
The Global Carbon Project (GCP) of the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) recently released a report entitled Carbon Reductions and Offsets, exploring voluntary reductions in carbon emissions via efficiency, emission avoidance, and offsetting. The decision making framework and conclusions are drawn from a case study of the ESSP, where travel, conferences, and office support are the major sources of carbon emissions, although the conclusions are also relevant for other programs and research institutions.
The Vulcan Project is a NASA/DOE funded effort under the North American Carbon Program (NACP) to quantify North American fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at space and time scales much finer than has been achieved in the past. The purpose is to aid in quantification of the North American carbon budget, to support inverse estimation of carbon sources and sinks, and to support the demands posed by the launch of the Orbital Carbon Observatory (OCO) scheduled for 2008/2009. Data are freely available to scientists and the public from www.purdue.edu/eas/carbon/vulcan. More information is available from the Purdue University press release describing the project and from a YouTube video showing maps generated using the Vulcan model.
The National Institute for Marine Sciences and Coastal Management in Algiers, Algeria is currently seeking abstracts for oral and poster presentations at CIEM 2008: Anthropogenic impacts on the marine environment. The Congress will address a number of specific topics related to anthropogenic and climate change impacts on marine and coastal systems and marine biodiversity. Abstracts are due May 30, 2008 and the conference is scheduled for October 27-29, 2008. More information is available in the meeting announcement.
Testimony from the June 5th hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology is now available online from the committee's website. Two of the witnesses, Scott Doney (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) and Richard Feely (NOAA), are members of both the Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group and Ocean Carbon and Climate Change Scientific Steering Group.
The NASA ASCENDS (Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, and Seasons) program will be holding a science definition and planning workshop July 23-25, 2008 in Ann Arbor, MI. The deadline for pre-registration and poster abstract submissions is July 14 and the deadline for guaranteed lodging rates is June 22. More information about the workshop and registration is available from http://cce.nasa.gov/ascends/index.htm.
The report from "North American Continental Margins: a synthesis and planning workshop" (September 2005) is now available as a pdf or in hard copy form [free of charge from the Global Change Research Information Office (GCRIO)].
The July 29, 2008 issue of Marine Ecology Progress Series contains a theme section on ocean iron fertilization (MEPS 364: 213-309). All of the articles are available to the public through the MEPS website.
The January 2008 issue of Oceanus is devoted to the question "Should we fertilize the ocean to reduce greenhouse gases?" (Oceanus 46(1)) and summarizes reports and discussion from the September 2007 workshop "Exploring ocean iron fertilization: the scientific, economic, legal and political basis." The articles are available online at the Oceanus website.
In its Decadal Survey Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond, the National Research Council of the National Academies recommended a satellite mission to produce global observations of multiple Earth surface attributes for a variety of terrestrial and aquatic studies, the management of terrestrial and coastal natural resources, and forecasting ecological changes and natural hazards. Currently known as HyspIRI, this mission is in the conceptual design phase at NASA. It consists of an imaging spectrometer in the visible to shortwave infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum and a multispectral imager in the thermal infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
NASA will convene a science community workshop on October 21-23, 2008, in Monrovia, CA - close to Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The primary goal of this workshop will be to discuss and review a draft white paper containing the scientific rationale for the HyspIRI mission. This white paper will focus on:
Workshop plenary discussions will provide an initial overview of the rationale for the mission, addressing the topics listed above. Breakout sessions will allow for community discussion and comment on these topics as well as other topics not covered by the white paper, including the need for additional studies and preparatory work. NASA will summarize workshop proceedings and findings in a report that will set the stage for finalizing the white paper. This white paper will provide guidance to NASA as it proceeds with Phase A mission planning.
There is no registration fee for this workshop, but early registration ensures adequate facilities for the sessions. More information, including workshop registration, logistics, and lodging, can be found online at http://hyspiri.jpl.nasa.gov. Inquiries about the HyspIRI Science Workshop should be directed to either Robert Green (e-mail: rog@jpl.nasa.gov; telephone: 1-818-354-9136) or Simon Hook (e-mail: simon.j.hook@nasa.gov; telephone: 1-818-354-0974).
To increase the use of the recently published Guide to best practices for ocean CO2 measurements, volunteers are being sought to assist with translations of the Guide to languages other than English. The chapter "Determination of dissolved organic carbon and total dissolved nitrogen in sea water" is available in Spanish (thanks to Dr. Laura Lorenzoni, University of South Florida and Dr. Victor Camacho, Autonomous University of Baja California). Those with an interest in helping to translate additional portions of the guide should contact Alex Kozyr at CDIAC.
Schuur, E.A.G. et al. 2008. Vulnerability of permafrost carbon to climate change: implications for the global carbon cycle. Bioscience 58(8):701-714. [Abstract and paper are available from Bioscience]
PowerPoint and video files from the July 2008 Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry summer workshop are now available online. The workshop focused on three interdisciplinary themes: climate sensitivity of ecosystem structure and associated impacts on biogeochemical cycles, carbon uptake and storage, and temporal trends in ecosystem variability.
Lueger, H., R. Wanninkhof, A. Olsen, J. Trinanes, T. Johannessen, D. Wallace, and A. Koertzinger, 2008. The CO2 air-sea flux in the North Atlantic estimated from satellite data and ARGO profiling float data. NOAA Technical Memorandum, OAR AOML-96, 28 pp. [pdf]
Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) Project. 2008. SOCAT-2 Meeting Report, Paris, France (June 16-17, 2008). IOCCP Report No. 9. 39 pp. [pdf]
The new www.carboschools.org website is now open. This multilingual webpage highlights collaboration between European research institutes and schools, offers access to the booklet "What we know, what we don't know and how we try to better understand global change," and provides a library of resources for school projects on global change. This new contribution to climate change education is the result of five years of continuous support from CarboEurope and CARBOOCEAN, now continuing through EPOCA (Euroepan project on ocean acidification) - and of many more years of pionneering teacher-scientist partnerships in various European countries. It is the first output of a new phase of CarboSchools currently funded by the Science in Society programme of the EU until 2010.
The Global Carbon Project released the new global carbon budget for 2007 on September 26th. Major findings include:
The full report is available at www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbontrends/index_new.htm.
The amount of methane in Earth's atmosphere shot up in 2007, bringing to an end approximately a decade in which atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas were essentially stable. The new study is based on data from a worldwide NASA-funded measurement network. Methane levels in the atmosphere have more than doubled since pre-industrial times, accounting for around one-fifth of the human contribution to greenhouse gas-driven global warming. Until recently, the leveling off of methane levels had suggested that the rate of its emission from Earth's surface was being approximately balanced by the rate of its destruction in the atmosphere. However, the balance has been upset since early 2007, according to research published this week in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters. The paper's lead authors, Matthew Rigby and Ronald Prinn of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, say this imbalance has resulted in several million metric tons of additional methane in the atmosphere. For more information, vist the NASA press release.
Benway, H.M. and S.C. Doney. 2008. Ocean carbon cycling and climate impacts on marine ecosystems. EOS, Trans. American Geophys. Union, 89(47), 472. [pdf]
On November 19-21, 2008, approximately 40 scientists from 10 countries met at IFM-GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany to establish an international agreement on best practices for ocean acidification research. The workshop was sponsored by the European Project on Ocean Acidification (EPOCA), the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP), the US Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry Program (OCB), and the Kiel "Future Ocean" Excellence Cluster. It covered seawater carbonate chemistry, experimental design of perturbation experiments, measurements of CO2-sensitive processes and data reporting and usage.
The participants agreed on the recommendations that would appear in a
guide as well as on authors and timelines for drafting each section.
While this first workshop was kept necessarily small, the development of
the best practices guide is meant to be an open community-wide activity.
Interested experts are invited to visit the EPOCA web site
(http://www.epoca-project.eu, click "Best Practices Guide" on the left) to review the
presentations from the meeting, the timeline for drafting and reviewing
the guide, and contacts.
This site (http://carbontracker.noaa.gov), which already has value to scientists, will become increasingly useful for various elements of society in their efforts to track how well they are managing carbon. Increased observations at any atmospheric level, but especially in the boundary layer, will go a long way toward reducing uncertainties, improving regional estimates, and allowing for smaller and smaller "regions."
The report is scheduled for release in Spring 2007. Check the SOCCR website for more information.
You can now submit carbon cycle science-related news, events, and funding opportunities to be posted on the Carbon Cycle Science Program website using our online forms.
The Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group (CCSSG) will welcome Richard Birdsey (USDA Forest Service) to a two-year term as chair at its May 31-June 1 meeting. Current chair James Yoder (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) will remain on the CCSSG as past-chair. The CCSSG also welcomes seven new members: Nicholas Bates (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences), Michael Behrenfeld (Oregon State University), Jae Edmonds (Joint Global Change Research Institute), Eric Kasischke (University of Maryland), Ariel Lugo (USDA Forest Service), Peter Raymond (Yale University), and William Schlesinger (Institute for Ecosystem Studies). Completing their terms of service on the CCSSG are: Phil Robertson (Michigan State University), Greg Asner (Carnegie Institution), Linda Joyce (USDA Forest Service), Charles McClain (NASA), John Reilly (Massachusetts Insitute of Technology), Steve Running (University of Montana), Jorge Sarmiento (Yale University), Sue Trumbore (University of California - Irvine), and Thomas Wilbanks (Oak Ridge National Laboratory).
The Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group (CCIWG) will bid good-bye to Edwin Sheffner (NASA) at its May 18 meeting. Sheffner is a long-serving member of CCIWG and has been a co-chair since 2006.
Testimony from the May 10th hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard is now available online from the subcommittee's website. Two of the witnesses, Scott Doney (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) and Richard Feely (NOAA), are members of both the Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group and Ocean Carbon and Climate Change Scientific Steering Group.
The Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group (CCIWG) welcomed Patricia Jellison (USGS) as co-chair of the group at their June 8 meeting. Jellison replaces Edwin Sheffner (NASA), who had served as co-chair since 2006.
Diane Wickland (NASA), a member of the Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group (CCIWG), was presented with the American Geophysical Union's Edward A. Flinn III Award at the AGU's spring meeting in Acapulco, Mexico. The award recognizes "unsung heroes" for facilitating, coordinating, and implementing activities that strengthen research. More information is available in this NASA press release.
Bev Law, a member of both the Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group and the North American Carbon Program Scientific Steering Group, discussed linkages between US, Italian, and European Union carbon cycle science initiatives at a June 18th meeting between representatives from the US and Italy. A copy of Law's presentation can be found here.
On July 17-19 in Orlando, FL, NASA will convene a workshop on the science of DESDynI, a mission recommended by the National Research Council’s Decadal Study Report, Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11820). NASA intends this meeting to be the first in a series of workshops and activities to involve the community in the refinement of the DESDynI mission and to thereby ensure optimal return to science and society. Those interested in attending the workshop must register at http://www.tisconferences.com/desdynl. There is no registration fee. More information is available in the workshop announcement.
Members of the Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group, the North American Carbon Program Scientific Steering Group, and the Ocean Carbon and Climate Change Scientific Steering Group have recently published meeting summaries and program updates in Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union:
A number of Special Sessions related to carbon cycle research will be held at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (December 10-14, 2007 in San Francisco, CA).
B31: Observing, Modeling, and Predicting Regional Scale Carbon Exchange. Obtaining optimal estimates of carbon exchange between the surface and the atmosphere at regional, continental, or ocean-basin scales, intermediate between local and global, remains a scientific challenge. There is a considerable amount of ongoing work to observe and analyze terrestrial and oceanic carbon exchange, aided in part by sustained research programs such as the North American Carbon Program, CarboEurope, and others. As research efforts targeting intermediate scales advance, aspects of the carbon exchange problem unique to the regional scale are emerging and just beginning to be addressed.
This session builds on a successful series conducted over the last few years at the AGU Fall Meeting. We invite contributions describing new terrestrial, oceanic, or atmospheric observations targeting regional or continental scale carbon exchanges, forward modeling efforts seeking to inventory or quantify them, and inverse modeling studies invoking various techniques to optimize estimates of carbon exchange. Presentations which comprehensively analyze data collected during recent integrated field campaigns (e.g. the mid-continent intensive) are encouraged, as are any studies that develop predictive capability for regional carbon exchange in addition to diagnostic capability.
Sub-sessions will consider, but are not limited to, i) inverse studies of tower and aircraft data ii) terrestrial bottom-up inventories ii) coastal carbon dynamics iv) oceanic regional carbon exchange v) model-data fusion vi) geographic focus (e.g. Mexico). However, we especially welcome studies that cut across the usual disciplinary boundaries of the regional carbon exchange problem—e.g. “top-down” and “bottom-up,” terrestrial and oceanic, biogenic and anthropogenic—and geographic boundaries.
B34: The Role of Climate, Carbon and Limiting Nutrient Cycles, and Human Activities in Terrestrial Ecosystems. Assessment of simulations to date with coupled carbon cycle-climate models show that carbon cycle feedbacks to climate change could significantly alter the rate of atmospheric CO2 concentration increase and climate change over the next hundred years. Nevertheless, the terrestrial carbon cycle is not only directly altered by increasing atmospheric CO2 and climate change; it is also indirectly altered by feedbacks from potentially limiting nutrient cycle (e.g., N and P) perturbations induced by changes in CO2 concentration and climate. Moreover, C cycle and other nutrient cycles and climate change, and the link between them are altered due to different natural and anthropogenic disturbance agents. The focus of this session will be the integrated understanding of climate, carbon and nutrient cycles and human activity (i.e., land cover and land use change) feedbacks in terrestrial ecosystems.
H65: Long-Term Memory in Hydroecology: Is There a Role for Equilibrium Models in Transient Systems? Global climate change dictates that an understanding of coupled hydrologic and ecological processes requires long-term memory effects involving transient system evolution and not just short-term processes. A number of factors affect the characteristic timescales of ecosystem processes, including groundwater dynamics, ecosystem aggradation/degradation, soil development, and climatic cycles. While much of the modeling community continues to embrace optimization or equilibrium approaches, we need to explore interactions with long-term transience in hydroecological processes. For this session we seek papers that address this issue through the use of mixed data and/or modeling approaches, a combination of water and (carbon or nutrient) fluxes and storages, and specifically attempt to understand characteristic timescales of processes. Example papers might consider ground water dynamics as a driver of net ecosystem exchange of carbon, large-scale changes in vegetation as a driver of water and carbon budgets, interactions between human-dominated and more natural systems, and interactions between terrestrial and aquatic systems.
The 7th meeting of the Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) of the Global Carbon Project (GCP), under the auspices of the international Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP), occurred in Hazyview and Kruger National Park, South Africa, on 20-22 August 2007. A total of twenty-two national carbon cycle experts from around the world discussed progress made on GCP activities over the past year, including defining the global carbon cycle, emission and sink trends, vulnerabilities of carbon sinks, and urban and regional carbon management. On the second day, they discussed and made a commitment to adopt global bioenergy as a new GCP element or program activity under the ESSP project. On the last day of the meeting, the national programs on carbon cycle science reported on regional activities. The U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program, represented by Roger Hanson, presented an update on U.S. science activities and collaboration activities with North American partners in the newly adopted Joint North American Carbon Program (Canada, Mexico and the United States). Furthering this collaboration effort beyond North America, the Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group sought GCP SSC assistance in developing a framework or platform for a global synthesis of national carbon program syntheses. A formal arrangement to engage this activity between the international SSC and CCIWG was established through the GCP International Project Office and U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program Office. The terms of reference for this engagement were approved and the regional synthesis challenge that the CCIWG offered to the SSC for full consideration was taken up. The SSC co-Chairs, Michael Raupach (Australia) and Anand Patwardhan (India), assigned the initial interim “synthesis of syntheses” to Philipe Ciais (France) and Corinne LeQuere (UK). They, along with Ming Xu (China), Raupach, Patwardhan, Pep Canadell (Australia), and Hanson, framed a preliminary process to initiate a GCP first synthesis book in two years time. The lead authors of book will balance the content over continents and adjacent ocean basins. A workshop is planned for December 2008 to synchronize and harmonize chapters prepared by expert contributors from national carbon programs.
On Aug 21-22, 2007, the NACP Science Steering Group (SSG) met in Greenbelt, MD with the Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group (CCIWG) to discuss the need to organize a set of “Interim Synthesis” activities that will communicate major findings of the Program to scientists, government agencies, and the public over the next two years. In addition, the SSG plans to develop a timeline for future synthesis and integration of NACP results that will be widely discussed with the investigator community at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, and hopes to work with an set of self-identified Working Groups that emerged from the All Investigators’ Meeting in Colorado Springs in January 2007. The full report can be viewed here.
Scott Doney (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute), chair of the Ocean Carbon and Climate Change Scientific Steering Group and member of the Carbon Cycle Science Steering Group, and Heather Benway (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute) recently published a news item in Limnology and Oceanography Bulletin (Volume 16(3): September 2007). Their contribution describes the newly formed Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) program and provides information about upcoming research opportunities through NSF and NOAA (FY 2008 and 2009). The complete article is available here.
The Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group (CCIWG) has recently welcomed three new members: Joseph Conny (National Institute of Standards and Technology), Louis Pitelka (National Science Foundation), and Mete Uz (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). Cary Presser (NIST) and Kathy Tedesco (NOAA) have recently stepped down from their positions on CCIWG.
In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS Early Edition, published October 25, 2007), Canadell et al. find that the recent swift increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to faster economic growth coupled with a halt in carbon intensity reductions, in addition to natural sinks removing a smaller proportion of emissions from the air. Efficiency of natural sinks to remove emissions from human activities has been declining for 50 years. More information about the study is available from the Global Carbon Project website. This paper, along with an earlier paper by Raupach et al. (PNAS, published June 12, 2007), completes the first round of global carbon budget analyses, and new analyses are already underway.
On November 13, the US Climate Change Science Program released Synthesis and Assessment Product 2.2, The First State of the Carbon Cycle Report (SOCCR): The North American Carbon Budget and Implications for the Global Carbon Cycle. The report analyzes the amounts of carbon emitted by industry sector, the amount absorbed naturally and how these amounts relate to the global carbon budget influenced by other regions of the globe, with particular attention given to characterizing the certainty and uncertainty with which these budget elements are known.
Major findings of the report include:
More information is also available in the press release announcing the report and in the Summary and Frequently Asked Questions brochure.
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On November 28-30, 2007, participants from around the world gathered for the 50th Anniversary of the Global CO2 Record Symposium and Celebration in Kona, HI. The conference included presentations by and discussions amongst representatives from government, academia, industry, and non-governmental organizations; many of the presentations are available from the conference website. Participants also visited the Mauna Loa Observatory, which has been recording atmospheric CO2 levels since 1958. |
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Services (CSREES) recently announced selections under Carbon Cycle Science (CARBON07). NASA and CSREES sought proposals to improve understanding of changes in the distribution and cycling of carbon among the active land, ocean, and atmospheric reservoirs. Of special interest were the factors that affect changes in the sources and sinks for atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) and carbon management to slow increases of these greenhouse gases. A total of 35 proposals were selected, with approximately $25.9 million in funding provided over three years. More information about the program is available from the description of proposal opportunity and from the announcement of selections.
This page last updated October 6, 2011.