Human activity changes climate through the release of carbon from fossil fuels (to produce energy), the release of aerosols or the change of land use. This so-called direct forcing is caused by the impact that the various molecules and aerosol particles have on the Earth's radiation budget. Absorption of infrared radiation or scattering of solar radiation directly affects the amount of energy that reaches the Earth's surface or that is being retained in the Earth's atmosphere.
MACC-II monitors the global CO2 and CH4 surface fluxes and therefore contributes to documenting the activity of the carbon cycle in the Earth system. MACC-II also monitors the impact of aerosols on the Earth's radiation budget: estimates are provided for the period 2003 - 2012.
The new MACC-II near-real-time high resolution (16km) CO2 forecast is available 3-hourly with a 5-day lead time. Interest has been raised by the InGOS/ICOS community - responsible for different insitu observing stations - on the availability of CO2 and CH4 forecasts for the planning and interpretation of the observations. The plots comparing the model forecast to the observations at the different ICOS stations are soon going to be available via the ICOS website. Specific requests of CO2 forecasts for other stations can be provided via ftp.