Carbon from space workshop

The 3rd Carbon from space workshop will be held in University of Exeter, UK, 26-28 January 2016

The 3rd Carbon from space workshop will be held in University of Exeter, UK, 26-28 January 2016 jointly organised by ESA and the GCP.

Over the last 10 years significant efforts have been made to establish an Integrated Global Carbon Observing System (IGCO) to provide insight into the behaviour of the carbon cycle and its interaction with climate, the water cycle and nutrient cycles. Following the 2 Carbon from Space workshop in Oxford and the publication of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Carbon Strategy (Ciais et al., 2010, 2014), the space agencies, coordinated by the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), have published a response setting out the high level requirements needed to contribute observations from Space to the Integrated Global Carbon Observing System (CEOS, 2014). This document, aims to address the establishment of appropriate and effective institutional arrangements for realization of the space component of the IGCO in the context of complementary (non-satellite) observations, supporting climate observations, and the activities and infrastructure required to make effective use of satellite observations while also providing a framework for monitoring, reporting and communicating progress towards implementation of the space component of IGCO.

In order to put words in action, in collaboration with the Global Carbon Project, the European Space Agency (ESA) is convening a workshop bringing together the EO, climate and Earth system science communities addressing the land, ocean and atmosphere components of the carbon cycle to define a concrete work plan of research and development activities to guide ESA next
programmatic actions and investments on Carbon research for the time frame 2017-2021.

The workshop will be based on dedicated topical sessions with keynote presentations, discussion
and break-out groups to define the recommended actions for the atmosphere, ocean and land
domains and the interfaces between them.

Preliminary topics to be defined by the organising committee include:

  • Observations of key carbon cycling variables and processes in the land, oceans, inland waters, and atmosphere
  • Do observations explain how changes are occurring and help to identify the causes and consequences ?
  • Magnitude of the CO2 sink over Europe? (differences found in inventories and the inversion results using in-situ and atmospheric satellite data)
  • Global land fluxes computed as a residual: Moving forward an observational based estimation
  • Quantification of ocean carbon stocks
  • Quantifying C sequestration into the deeper oceans
  • Air-sea transfer and ocean dynamics ?
  • The ocean acidification: opportunities from satellite technology
  • Tropical versus extratropical sinks and sources
  • Climate driven variability of carbon sources and sinks ?
  • How to reconcile observations and ensure consistency of carbon fluxes over ocean, land and atmosphere

An interactive session with poster presentations will be also organised opening the scope of the event to the latest research and scientific results in the Carbon science domain

The main expected output of the workshop is a community paper to contribute to establishing a strong ESA programmatic component on Carbon research for the time frame 2017-2021.