The Global Carbon Cycle
Links to Related Web Sites

The Global Carbon Cycle

Overview

Recent Accomplishments

Archived News Postings [June 2000 - July 2005]

Related Sites

Calls for Proposals

Please note, this is not a comprehensive list; contact the webmaster to suggest additions.

AmeriFlux.  This is "a network of CO₂ flux measurement sites throughout North and Central America. The AmeriFlux network is intended to address complex issues relating to the global carbon cycle by contributing to the understanding of factors that regulate rates of uptake and net sequestration of CO₂ by major biomes."

Atmospheric Tracer Transport Model Intercomparison Project (TransCom).  A "a special project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), Global Analysis, Interpretation, and Modeling (GAIM) Project, the objective of which is to quantify and diagnose the uncertainty in inversion calculations of the global carbon budget that result from errors in simulated atmospheric transport, the choice of measured atmospheric carbon dioxide data used, and the inversion methodology employed."

Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS). A "large-scale international interdisciplinary experiment in the northern boreal forests of Canada. Its goal is to improve our understanding of the boreal forests -- how they interact with the atmosphere, how much CO₂ they can store, and how climate change will affect them."

Carbon Mitigation Initiative.  This is a joint project of Princeton University, BP and 
the Ford Motor Company. "The mission of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative is to find a solution to the greenhouse gas problem. We intend to identify the most credible methods of capturing and sequestering a large fraction of carbon emissions from fossil fuels."  Includes section on Carbon Science.

Global Analysis, Interpretation, and Modeling (GAIM).  A "component of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP) of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU)...The goal of GAIM is to advance the study of the coupled dynamics of the Earth system using as tools both data and models."

Global Ocean Data Analysis Project (GLODAP).  GLODAP is a cooperative effort among 13 principal investigators, funded for several synthesis and modeling projects through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation.

GLOBALVIEW Cooperative Atmospheric Data Integration Project (GLOBALVIEW).  "GLOBALVIEW is designed to enhance the spatial and temporal distribution of atmospheric observations of CO₂ and CH₄. Measurement records from many international laboratories are integrated and extended to produce a globally consistent cooperative data product. GLOBALVIEW is specifically intended as a tool for use in carbon cycle modeling studies. "

Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia.  An international research initiative led by Brazil and "designed to create the  new knowledge needed to understand the climatological, ecological, biogeochemical, and hydrological functioning of Amazonia, the impact of land use change on these functions, and the interactions between Amazonia and the Earth system."

NASA

• NASA Earth Science Enterprise.  "Programs of the Earth Science Enterprise use NASA's research and technology to advance the interdisciplinary field of Earth System Science to help fulfill NASA's mission to understand and protect our home planet."
• Global Change Master Directory (GCMD).  The directory "provides descriptions of Earth science data sets and services relevant to global change research. The GCMD database includes descriptions of data sets covering agriculture, the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere and oceans, snow and ice, geology and geophysics, paleoclimatology, and human dimensions of global change."
• Land-Cover Land-Use Change Program.
• Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative.  The initiative will "identify the critical science questions and establish a program of coordinated research on the state and dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems in northern Eurasia and their interactions with the Earth's Climate system."

National Science Foundation,  Directorate for Geosciences.

Ocean Carbon-Cycle Model Intercomparison Project (OCMIP).  A research initiative of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program's Global Analysis,
Interpretation and Modeling (GAIM) and Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS).

Surface Ocean Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS).  An international research initiative which has as its goal "to achieve quantitative understanding of the key biogeochemical-physical interactions and feedbacks between the ocean and the atmosphere, and how this coupled system affects and is affected by climate and environmental change." 

Smithsonian Institution

• Climate Change and Forest Dynamics Plots (Center for Tropical Forest Science)
• Effects of Elevated CO2 (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center)

U.S. Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (U.S. JGOFS).  "The goal of this program is to understand the processes controlling the cycles of carbon and associated elements in the ocean."  See also the US JGOFS Data System.

U.S. Department of Agriculture USDA Agricultural Research Service, Global Change Program. USDA-Forest Service, Northern Global Change Research Program.  "The Forest Service goal for global change research is to establish a sound scientific basis for making regional, national, and international resource management and policy decisions in the context of global change issues."

U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

• Global Carbon Cycle
• AOML CO2 Group (AOML-CO2).  "We are a part of the Ocean Chemistry Division at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Our goal is to assess the ocean's role in controlling the exchange of carbon dioxide (CO₂) across the air-sea interface and its eventual penetration into the water masses of the deep ocean."
• Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Global Carbon Cycle Group (PMEL-GCC).  "The GCC CO₂ Program at PMEL in Seattle, Washington, conducts research on the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide in the oceans."
• Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Labroatory (CMDL),  Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases group.  "The NOAA CMDL Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases group makes ongoing discrete measurements from land and sea surface sites and aircraft, and continuous measurements from baseline observatories and tall towers. These measurements document the spatial and temporal distributions of carbon-cycle gases and provide essential constraints to our understanding of the global carbon cycle."
• Office of Global Programs, Global Carbon Cycle Program.  "Program seeks to improve our ability to predict the fate of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) and future atmospheric CO2 concentrations using a combination of atmospheric and oceanic global observations, process-oriented field studies and modeling."
• Ferret Data Visualization and Analysis (CMC Data Server).  "Ferret is an interactive computer visualization and analysis environment designed to meet the needs of oceanographers and meteorologists analyzing large and complex gridded data sets." Produced by NOAA / OAR / PMEL / TMAP,

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)

• Environmental Sciences Division, Office of Biological and Environmental Research.

• Office of Science, Carbon Sequestration

• Carbon Sequestration Program

• Lawrence Livermore National Lab's Research on Ocean Carbon Sequestration

• Berkeley Lab's Research on Ocean Carbon Sequestration

• Research Links and Background on Ocean Carbon Sequestration

  

  Carbon Dioxide
  Information Analysis
  Center (CDIAC).  CDIAC " which includes the World Data Center for Atmospheric Trace Gases, "is the primary global-change data and information analysis center of the U.S. Department of Energy."

US Energy Information Administration

• Greenhouse Gases Program
• Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2001

US Geological Survey (USGS), Carbon Cycle Research (USGS-CC)

U.S. Global Change Data and Information System (GCDIS).  Site sponsored by the US Global Change Research Program's Data and Information Working Group.

U.S. Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER).  "The Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network is a collaborative effort involving more than 1100 scientists and students investigating ecological processes over long temporal and broad spatial scales."

U.S. World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE).  "The World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) is the WCRP [World Climate Research Programme] program designed to investigate the ocean's role in decadal climate change.  Scientists from more than 30 countries have collaborated during the WOCE field program to sample the ocean on a global scale with the aim of describing its large-scale circulation patterns, its effect on gas storage, and how it interacts with the atmosphere. WOCE data are accumulating at instrument-specific data centers. As the data are collected and archived, they are being used to construct improved models of ocean circulation and the combined ocean-atmosphere system that should improve global climate forecasts."