The 973 National Major Research Program (Climate Changing Field) “ The key processes of carbon cycle and their coupling with the climate system research ”

Program Leader : Professor Guanghui Lin

Program Website :http://www.sfnt.net/cproject/index.php/column/5

Program Description :

The research about key biogeochemical processes and mechanisms of terrestrial , marine and interface related to carbon cycling is the basics to reduce the uncertainly of climate prediction and build a new generation of carbon cycle models . How to realize the efficiency and precision coupling of carbon cycle models and global climate system models which include these ecological processes above is not only the most challenging and urgent task faced by climate prediction and global climate changing research , but also is difficulty and bottleneck in the development of high resolution erath system models . China urgently needs carbon cycle models and carbon cycle-climate coupling models developed independently to reveal the mechanism of carbon cycle-climate crossfeed , so as to supply a more quantitative assessment of the credibility of carbon sinks to provide a scientific proof to the government for seeking international carbon emission rights in the international negotiations .

This program is focused on the key process and mechanism of carbon cycling to construct the global carbon cycling – climate coupling models with the East Asian features . So it can solve two problems , the first impact of the key biogeochemical process of carbon cycle in land-sea interface on the carbon budget of different scales ; the second is the carbon cycling’s feedback strength on climate and sensitivity of the earth system and other key scientific issues under the scenarios of carbon cycling and climate coupling .

This program has four projects . The first is the key biogeochemical process and mechanism of carbon cycling ; the second is the construction the research of a new generation about terrestrial – marine carbon cycle models ; the third is the coupling of global carbon cycling- climate models and the evaluation on it ; and the last is the influence of carbon cycling-climate changing crossfeed strength and the research on the sensitivity of the earth system .

General Goals :

Built the marine-land-atmosphere carbon cycling and climate coupling based on the biogeochemical processes and mechanism to assess the global typical land-marine system carbon cycling’s feedback strength on climate changing . Quantitatively evaluate of the sensitivity of the Earth system , enhance and develop the theories and practices of earth system science , then promote the basic research of the interaction of carbon cycling and climate changing , train a lots of youth team researching on carbon cycling process and mechanism and models . All the goals are contributing to provide scientific proofs for the government in global climate changing , developing control policy to manage and develop of regional carbon sequestration of carbon emission , raise the voice of China in international climate negotiations .