ESA Carbon Amazon Rainforest Airborne project (CarbonARA)

Understanding the size and dynamics of the emissions from fossil fuels and their partitioning among the atmosphere, land and ocean has been at the heart of the carbon-cycle research community for the last decades. Since the UNFCCC Paris Agreement (PA), quantifying and attributing sources and sinks of GHGs also became of high societal importance, given that it is essential in the definition and evaluation of climate mitigation goals. New capabilities are needed for accurate attribution of sources and sinks and their trends to natural and anthropogenic processes. Space-based earth observation information has the potential to contribute to achieving the PA mitigation and adaptation objectives in many ways, including feeding into the Global Stocktake (GST) process.

It is recognised that some areas on the Earth have greater uncertainty about current/projected emissions of GHGs, the Amazon is one of them. A large-scale field experiment, has the potential to bring together a complete suite of observations and models in critical zones currently regarded as tipping points of terrestrial emissions in the near future. In its strategy to address and support the GST of the PA for Climate, CEOS recommends, to set up focused observational campaigns. This will significantly contribute to the understanding of the trends of GHG emissions from natural sources in key areas. The Carbon Amazon Rainforest Airborne project (CarbonARA) is a cooperative field study designed to address exactly this point. In particular, CarbonARA will contribute to better understand the spatial and temporal variations in carbon stocks and fluxes associated with different land cover types. 

The campaign will set up a field experiment to measure relevant parameters by means of combined ground-based (proximal sensing and in-situ), airborne systems (remote sensing and in-situ) and satellite observations. The focus will be on covering local-to-regional scales with long-term ground-based observation in combination with dedicated airborne activities.