Improving carbon data assimilation systems
The Kyoto Protocol (KP) permits nations to partly make up for CO2 emissions with carbon collected by forest management and through land use change. However, until now there was no system which could approximate national level sources and sinks in a manner which is easy to understand and verify. In light of this, the EC-funded project CAMELS has designed a carbon cycle data assimilation system that employs these data sources. It does this in concurrence with the most current terrestrial ecosystem models (TEMs) in order to estimate European land carbon sink. Using process-based TEMs and forest inventory models permits land-management contribution to be isolated which meets the KP requirements. Following this, CAMELS created an online and ad hoc consultation to the European Commission and presented their project results on numerous occasions in 2004. Two of these events were the most significant. One was a workshop organized by the Global Carbon Project in collaboration with CarboEurope greenhouse gas (GHG). This was held in Beijing, China on 15-18 November 2004. Its aim was to create a mutual framework to improve comparability among various methods and figures of carbon stock and flux measurement according to their scope and system boundaries. A second significant event was the Conference of the Parties to UNFCCC in Buenos Aires (COP10) in which the EU Commission organised a side event on carbon research. Feedback received addressed the need for further understanding of carbon data assimilation systems and the way in which they act as a support system for monitoring terrestrial carbon. In this way, it can determine vulnerabilities and abilities of the terrestrial biosphere to adapt to changing climate which are priorities for policy makers.
