towards synthesizing regional and global carbon budgets - the reccap context christoph heinze
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Towards synthesizing regional and global carbon budgets
- the RECCAP context
Christoph Heinze
RECCAP REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment
and Processes
RECCAP REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment
and ProcessesPep Canadell
International Project OfficeCSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
Canberra, Australia
RECCAP: Goal
• To establish the mean carbon balance of large regions of the globe at the scale of continents and large ocean basins, including their component fluxes.
• By using, comparing and synthesizing bottom-up estimates (observations and models) with the results of regional top-down atmospheric inversions, in a consistent way across all regions as guided by a “soft” protocol.
How
Why RECCAP?
• To support national and regional interest in understanding the C balance with the ultimate goal of identifying leverage points for climate mitigation.
• To constrain the global carbon budget and its regional contributions to better understand source/sink processes, and with this, the dynamics of future carbon-climate feedbacks.
• To evaluate the regional ‘hot-spots’ of interannual variability and trends, and underlying processes over the past decades by combining available long-term observations and modeling.
Questions to CarboOcean/Eur-Ocean modellers:
-Should we enter in? Good perspective to synthesize CarboOcean and Eur-Oceans results: CO WPs 1,2,3,11,16,17 relevance, Eur-Oceans WP3.
-Global ocean hub: Bergen has been approached by Pep (GCP) and conference call with Corinne and Chris has taken place, Niki also positive). Truls probably ca attract further funding for personpower (obs + modelling). Needs seamless merging with other activities. Would rather another group do this? (Jim Orr, Laurent Bopp, others?)
-Relation to COCOS (Coodination Action Carbon Observing System): Han Dolman (coord.), D. Wallace, C. Heinze; WP1 Enhancing interoperability of existing networks in land and ocean, WP3 Integration of multiple data sources for regional carbon budgets, WP5 Filling in gaps in data of vulnerable global carbon pools and fluxes in the ocean
-Feasibility: + required temporal resolution for observations probably too ambitious? +Could we deliver the regional split up (together with the global one) easily? +ESMs (with own “weather”) vs. ocean component models (with “observed forcing”), what makes sense? +how to get hold of overseas runs? +how much standardisation/”hard” protocols would be necessary, though RECCAP does NOT aim at a sophisticated intercomparison study, but wants to build on runs which already exist? +are there regional model runs around which make sense?
• Canadian forests moving from sinks to sources due to fire and beetle damage.
• US and Australian regional sink potential being dominated by woody regrowth and encroachment.
• China’s largely human-made sink absorbing 28-35% of its cumulated fossil carbon emission during 1980s and 1990s.
• European sink dominated by land abandonment and N fertilization.
• Southeast Asia sink dominated by fire emissions.
Terrestrial budgets (examples of key findings)
Le Quere, 2007, Science
Ocean budgets (example of key finding)
sea-air CO2 flux anomaly
Southern Ocean
expected trend
trend estimated from observations
Indications for a decrease in sink strength: North Atlantic
Hovmüller plots of pCO2 (μatm) (defined as the atmosphere minus sea surface):
Schuster & Watson, JGR, 2007
1990s high
2000s lower
• Atmosphere (inverse CO2 modeling)– Mean C budget– Interannual variability– Trends
• Land (biogeochem. models, inventories, other observations)– Mean C budget– Seasonal cycles and disturbances– Components of NEP (GPP, NPP, RH, disturbances)– Internnual anomalies and trends
• Ocean (inversions, observations, biogeochem. models)– Mean C budget (surface and interior ocean)– Natural and anthropogenic C fluxes– Average monthly seasonal cycles– Interannual variability and trends
Soft Protocol
• Regional cuts from global models and databases are provided to regional groups (eg, atm. Inv, global biogechem models).
• Regional groups bring together existing regional information and synthesize all bottom up and top down. There is no prescription on model driver data.
• Global synthesis takes place at a 5-day workshop (cross cutting themes/chapters).
• Regional RECAPP Server provide a central data repository that will house data, model descriptions, documentation, and analysis results.
• Data and Model Output Fair Use policy (Oak Ridge)
How will it happen?
Piao et al, in review
Top-down, Bottom-up approach (terrestrial example)
Products
• Synthesis book (or special issue)
• High-level synthesis paper reporting key results
• Summary for Policy Makers
• Database (updatable in the future) of C fluxes from regional and global estimates
Global Introductory Synthesis (Chapters)
RECCAP (2008-2010)Ch-G1 Fossil fuel emissions
Ch-G2 Land use change emissions
Ch-G3 Global C budget & CO2 Invers.
Ch-O1 Global ocean climatologies
Regional Synthesis (Chapters)
RECCAP (2008-2010)
LandCh-L1 AfricaCh-L2 AustraliaCh-L3 ChinaCh-L4 EuropeCh-L5 N. America Ch-L6 Russia Ch-L7 S. AmericaCh-L8 South and S.E. Asia
OceansCh-O2 Pacific Ch-O3 Atlantic and ArcticCh-O4 Southern OceanCh-O5 Indian
Rivers and Coastal ZonesCh-O6 Coastal OceanCh-G3 Rivers and lateral fluxes
Global Synthesis of Synthesis (Chapters)
RECCAP (2008-2010)Ch-S1 Comparison of top &
bottom up
Ch-S2 Int-an.variability regional
Ch-S3 Attribution to regional processes
Ch-S4 Past and future trends in regional C budgets
Ch-S5 Final recommendations
Timetable (to be revisited)August 2007: Draft of mandate and scope
April 2008: “Sign-in” on chapter scope ; regional programs are contacted and will provide feedback including possible participants and lead authors.
May 2008: Chapter framework (list of questions to be addressed) and time window (spatial &temporal resolution)
February 2009: Regional groups deliver chapters drafts by chapter lead authors
March-April 2009: Internal review of the chapters & model results output is collected.
June 2009: Hold the meeting over 4 days; get revised MS from internal review ; draft of the SOS chapters
July 2009: Estimated 12 months processing; reviewing and finishing the SOS chapters, checking the consistency between chapters (units, definitions …); provide summary tables with fluxes in Annex
Received Endorsement
• COordination action Carbon Observation System (COCOS), Europe
• Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System (QUEST), UK
• CarboEurope and CarboAfrica• Carbon Cycle Interagency Working Group (CCIWG), USA• Chinese Science Academy (CAS), China• CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Australia• National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan• Long-Term Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment (LBA),
Brazil
Shall CarboOcean enter in??
Scientific Steering Committee
• Philippe Ciais, Chair (France)• Pep Canadell, Coordination (Australia)• Chris Field (USA)• Niki Gruber (Switzerland)• Corinne Le Quere (UK)• Antonio Nobre (Brazil)• Mike Raupach (Australia)• Chris Sabine (USA)• Ming Xu (China)
Questions to CarboOcean/Eur-Ocean modellers:
-Should we enter in? Good perspective to synthesize CarboOcean and Eur-Oceans results: CO WPs 1,2,3,11,16,17 relevance, Eur-Oceans WP3.
-Global ocean hub: Bergen has been approached by Pep (GCP) and conference call with Corinne and Chris has taken place, Niki also positive). Truls probably ca attract further funding for personpower (obs + modelling). Needs seamless merging with other activities. Would rather another group do this? (Jim Orr, Laurent Bopp, others?)
-Relation to COCOS (Coodination Action Carbon Observing System): Han Dolman (coord.), D. Wallace, C. Heinze; WP1 Enhancing interoperability of existing networks in land and ocean, WP3 Integration of multiple data sources for regional carbon budgets, WP5 Filling in gaps in data of vulnerable global carbon pools and fluxes in the ocean
-Feasibility: + required temporal resolution for observations probably too ambitious? +Could we deliver the regional split up (together with the global one) easily? +ESMs (with own “weather”) vs. ocean component models (with “observed forcing”), what makes sense? +how to get hold of overseas runs? +how much standardisation/”hard” protocols would be necessary, though RECCAP does NOT aim at a sophisticated intercomparison study, but wants to build on runs which already exist? +are there regional model runs around which make sense?
There is a suggestion for a minimum solution concerning a potential contribution of CarboOcean modellers to RECCAP in case that no additional funding will come in:
(a) Provide CarboOcean funded results from coupled C cycle climate models for 1990-2005 (monthly averages) for CO2 air-sea flux for globe and RECCAP regions. Potentially provide gridded data and further variables such as surface fields of DIC and Alk etc.
(b) Potentially in addition provide CarboOcean funded results from forced ocean only models (synoptic “observed” forcing).
(c) Data delivery will only be possible, if an agreeable data policy can be found, which protects data originators’ intellectual property rights and does not violate/override the data policy of CarboOcean itself.
(d) It must be visible that the results have been provided by CarboOcean, and as such are funded and provided by the project (i.e. that they are CarboOcean results funded by the European Commission).
(e) I plan to discuss RECCAP and a respective CarboOcean endorsement on the upcoming 4th CarboOcean annual meeting (8-12 Dec 2008, France) with the CarboOcean consortium and SSC.
We discussed a bit more in detail the RECCAP wishes and the soft protocol with respect to the modelling part:
(a) Any work in addition to the minimum solution needs additional funding. The work cannot be carried out by existing funded personal and also not by the CarboOcean coordinator himself without additional funds.
(b) In principle, for RECCAP, best would be use of synoptically forced ocean only model runs (using prescribed atmospheric pCO2) in order to analyse the marine fluxes. However, in CarboOcean we focused (in view of the limited available funding) on coupled C cycle climate models as used in future scenarios. Therefore, also non-CarboOcean model runs and runs from other communities may be needed. Getting hold of these runs and to analyse them needs effort. On the other hand, coupled C cycle climate models include the feedback between climate change and atmospheric CO2. Ideally coupled and forced models need to be considered both.
(c) Model results for the entire 1959-2010 period are not always monthly available from all existing runs. Expensive and time consuming re-runs could be necessary.
(d) Existing model runs do not all follow the same protocol (such as the OCMIP protocol). (e) Requirements/tasks for carrying out the modelling RECCAP work (without ocean inversions):
(e) Requirements/tasks for carrying out the modelling RECCAP work (without ocean inversions):
-Data acquisition-Data reading (format clarifications etc., even needed when netCDF is used, as often variables
are missing, non-standard units are used, geometry information is missing etc.)-Data quality checking (no negative concentrations etc.)-Data analysis and extraction of regionally averaged numbers for 1990-2005 and 1959-2010
(total averages, monthly averages, annual averages) plus split natural/anthropogenic.-Acquire and compile meta information such as model descriptions.-Transfer model data and meta information to standard format and to common data server.-Make data from common data server easily accessible.-Take care of all data policy issues, individual data protection, flagging of data access for a
longer period of time (as long as data server exists).-For the model part of RECCAP we anticipate that this work realistically needs initially a full 2-
year post-doc/data manager position. Minimum would be 18 months.
(f) Funding: We are looking at the Bjerknes Centre on possibilities to attract further funding for this (discussions with Truls Johannessen on a fast track proposal to the Norwegian Research Council for both observations&model handling have been carried out; Christoph Heinze will in addition discuss funding attraction from Norwegian sources with the director of the Bjerknes Centre in the coming week probably on 20 Nov). Realistically seen including proposal writing, evaluation, and - if successful - hiring of personnel would take until spring/summer 2009 nevertheless. We will be happy to continue our efforts to attract money for this purpose, but there is no guarantee, that we will be successful.
DRAFT SLIDE FOR TASK EXPOSÉ ON RECCAP OCEAN HUB
Mention also Doug’s COCOS activities
