RECCAP - coastal

RECCAP approach schematic to generate a global carbon balance with regional resolution.

RECCAP approach

The Global Carbon Project has initiated an international synthesis activity called the REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP) aimed at combining evaluations of the atmosphere, land, oceans and humans to develop a global carbon balance. The project hopes to establish mean carbon balance estimates at the regional scale, a comparison of top-down and bottom-up flux estimates and evaluation of regional ‘hot spots’ of carbon flux activity.

The goals of RECCAP are to provide higher spatial resolution of the global carbon balance which will allow scientists to improve process attribution and identify regions essential to understanding the future evolution of the carbon cycle; to address a growing demand for a capacity to Measure, Report, and Verify (MRV) the evolution of regional fluxes and the outcomes of climate mitigation policies; to support capacity building in regions with regional carbon balances of significant global influence but with little or no technical capabilities; and to respond to the Group on Earth Observations (EOS) in establishing a global carbon observatory to track the evolution of natural and anthropogenic carbon sources and sinks.

The PMEL Carbon Program is contributing to the coastal oceans and marginal seas component of RECCAP by providing surface ocean pCO₂ observations. Available historical observations are localized and widely separated in both space and time. The initiation of PMEL’s coastal carbon observation program along the U.S. West Coast in 2006 has contributed to a tripling of the number of observations along the North American West Coast since 2006 available for refining estimates of air-sea CO₂ exchange in the coastal oceans.