Grant Agreement number: 283080
Project acronym: GEOCARBON
Project title: : Operational Global Carbon Observing System
Funding Scheme: Collaborative Project (large scale integrating project) - for specific cooperation actions (SICA) dedicated to international cooperation partner countries
Period covered: from 01/10/2011 to 31/12/2014
Name, title and organisation of the scientific representative of the project's coordinator 1 :
Riccardo Valentini, Director, Division on Agriculture, Forest and Natural Ecosystems
(IAFENT) of the Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici SCARL (CMCC)Tel:
+39 0761 357 394
Tel: +39 0761 1710299
Fax: +39 0761 1710731
E-mail: rik@unitus.it
Project website address: www.geocarbon.net
Please add the number of your CMP in the name of this file!
1 Usually the contact person of the coordinator as specified in Art. 8.1. of the Grant Agreement .

Please add the number of your WP in the name of this file!
Please note that the term “Beneficiary” refers to each project partner.
Please use always the font Times New Roman, size 12.
(40 pages MAX, excluding images, photos, graphs, etc)
WHO: WP LEADERS with the contribution of the WP participants.
Please cover points 3 and
4 below at WP level. The text should be very clear, appealing but simple! This will be used by EC – as it is - for dissemination. It will be important to have nice photos, images, graphs, etc.)
This section must be of suitable quality to enable direct publication by the Commission and should preferably not exceed four pages. Nevertheless, diagrams or photographs illustrating and promoting the work of the project, as well as relevant contact details or list of partners can be provided without restriction.
The final publishable summary report has to include all the distinct parts described below:
1. An executive summary (not exceeding 1 page).
2. A summary description of project context and objectives.
3. A description of the main S&T results/foregrounds (not exceeding 2 pages, figures included)
4. The potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) and the main dissemination activities and exploitation of results (not exceeding 1/2 page).
5. The address of the project public website, if applicable
This report describes the results of several Carbon Cycle Data Assimilation Systems (CCDASs) that have been built/consolidated within GEOCARBON in order to quantify continental to regional carbon balances. For the land, five systems, assimilating different data streams allow to optimize either the parameters or the fluxes of state of the art land ecosystem models. For the ocean, two systems optimize the parameters of an ocean model and one system used a statistical optimization scheme. The methodologies used by the different (CCDAs) can be summarized by:

BETHY-CCDAS : based on the BETHY land ecosystem model; optimization of 57 parameters over a period of 30 years. Variational assimilation of atmospheric CO2 data using the TM2 atmospheric transport models.

JSBACH-CCDAS : based on the JSABACH land ecosystem model; optimization of 45 parameters over 3 years. Variational assimilation of atmospheric CO2 data using the TM3 atmospheric transport model and of FAPAR as provided by the TIP-FAPAR product.

LSCE-CCDAS : based on the ORCHIDEE land ecosystem model; optimization of around
100 parameters over 20 years. Step-wise variational assimilation of MODIS-NDVI, FluxNet carbon and water fluxes (70 sites) and atmospheric CO2 data using the LMDz atmospheric transport model. The ocean component was optimized initially using a neural network approach with pCO2 observations from SOCAT and ocean physical variables.

DALEC-CCDAS : based on the DALEC land ecosystem model; optimization of few parameters for each grid cell (1° resolution) for 10 years. MCMC assimilation of MODIS-
LAI, soil carbon data (HWSD), biomass data from Saatchi et al. (2011) and MODIS burned area with forcing provided by the ERA interim meteorology.

CTRACKER_EU-CCDAS : based on the SIB-CASA land ecosystem model; optimization of the surface fluxes themselves for eco-regions. Kalman filter assimilation of atmospheric
CO2 data using the TM5 atmospheric transport model over 15 years.


MICOM- CCDAS : based on the low-resolution version of MICOM-HAMOCC5 (Miami
Isopycnic Coordinate Ocean Model and Hamburg Oceanic Carbon Cycle) model; optimization of 2 main parameters over 5 years. Kalman filter assimilation of surface pCO2 measurements from SOCAT database.

CMCC-CCDAS : based on a coupled physical-biogeochemical OGCM (NEMOv3.4 and
BFM biogeochemical model); Variational assimilation of the physical components using temperature and salinity. Carbon components or other biogeochemical variables will be assimilated later.
Optimized net and gross land ecosystem carbon fluxes, above ground biomass, and net air-sea fluxes are provided on a monthly temporal resolution at 1°x1° spatial resolution. These results are compared under a dedicated web site ( http://transcom.globalcarbonatlas.org/ ) with global maps and time series for regional totals and further evaluated and analyzed in WP13 (D12.1 and D13.1).
Significant differences in the net land and ocean carbon fluxes are obtained, even between the systems that use the same constraint (i.e. atmospheric CO2).
Figure 1 illustrates the global annual land carbon fluxes obtained from 5 CCDASs. The global land carbon flux is around -1.5 PgC/yr over the 2000s, but with significant differences between the different systems. The DALEC-CCDAS has the smallest land sink (around -0.5 PgC/yr), while
BETHY-CCDAS has the largest sink (around -2 PgC/yr). However the year-to-year variations are more similar across the systems as well as the long-term trend that show an increasing sink over the
2000s.
1 . 5
1 . 0
0 . 5
0 . 0
- 0 . 5
- 1 . 0
- 1 . 5
- 2 . 0
- 2 . 5
- 3 . 0
- 3 . 5
1 9 8 2 1 9 8 4 1 9 8 6 1 9 8 8 1 9 9 0 1 9 9 2 1 9 9 4 1 9 9 6
D a t e
1 9 9 8 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 8 2 0 1 0
BET H Y CCD AS / Te r r e st r ia l
CT EU CCD AS V 2 / Te r r e st r ia l
D ALEC CCD AS / Te r r e st r ia l f u x / 0 5 Glo b a l La n d / Y e a r ly m e a n f
JSBACH CCD AS V 2 / Te r r e st r ia l u x / 0 5 Glo b a l La n d / Y e a r ly m e a n
LSCE CCD AS V 3 0 / Te r r e st r ia l u x / 0 5 Glo b a l La n d / Y e a r ly m e a n
Figure 1: Global net annual mean land carbon fluxes for 5 CCDAS used in this project.
-1 . 2
-1 . 4
-1 . 6
-1 . 8
-2 . 0
-2 . 2
-2 . 4
-2 . 6
-2 . 8
-3 . 0
Figure 2 illustrates the ocean carbon fluxes for the different CCDASs. The global ocean carbon flux is around -2.2 PgC/yr over the 2000s, but with large differences between the different systems. The
UIB-HAMOCC system has the largest ocean sink (around -2.8 PgC/yr), while CMCC system has the smallest sink (around -1.8 PgC/yr). The year-to-year variations are smaller than for land but not in phase across the systems. Significant differences in terms of long-term trend appear with increasing sink in LSCE-system after 2000 but decreasing sink in CMCC.
-1 . 0
1 9 9 1 1 9 9 2 1 9 9 3 1 9 9 4 1 9 9 5 1 9 9 6 1 9 9 7 1 9 9 8 1 9 9 9 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 1
D a t e
2 0 0 2 2 0 0 3 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 7 2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 2 0 1 0 2 0 1 1
CM CC TSr e a n / Oce a n f u x / 1 7 Glob a l Oce a n / Ye a r ly m e a n
CTEU CCD AS V 2 / Oce a n f u x / 1 7 Glob a l Oce a n / Ye a r ly m e a n
LSCE CCD AS V 3 0 / Oce a n f u x / 1 7 Glob a l Oce a n / Ye a r ly m e a n
UIB H AM OCC v 1 / Oce a n f u x / 1 7 Glob a l Oce a n / Ye a r ly m e a n
Figure 2: Global net annual mean ocean carbon fluxes for 4 CCDAS used in this project.