Program: North American Carbon Program

The North American Carbon Program (NACP) is a multidisciplinary research program to obtain scientific understanding of North America's carbon sources and sinks and of changes in carbon stocks needed to meet societal concerns and to provide tools for decision makers. Successful execution of the NACP will require an unprecedented level of coordination among observational, experimental, and modeling efforts regarding terrestrial, oceanic, atmospheric, and human components. The NACP is supported by a number of different federal agencies through a variety of intramural and extramural funding mechanisms and award instruments. NACP will rely upon a rich and diverse array of existing observational networks, monitoring sites, and experimental field studies in North America and its adjacent oceans. Integrating these different program activities and maximizing synergy amongst them, will require expert guidance beyond the norm for large field programs in Earth system science and global climate change.

Central Objective

The central objective of the North American Carbon Program is to measure and understand the sources and sinks of Carbon Dioxide (CO₂), Methane (CH₄), and Carbon Monoxide (CO) in North America and in adjacent ocean regions.

Goals

• Develop quantitative scientific knowledge, robust observations, and models to determine the emissions and uptake of CO₂, CH₄, and CO, changes in carbon stocks, and the factors regulating these processes for North America and adjacent ocean basins.
• Develop the scientific basis to implement full carbon accounting on regional and continental scales. This is the knowledge base needed to design monitoring programs for natural and managed CO₂ sinks and emissions of CH₄.
• Support long-term quantitative measurements of fluxes, sources, and sinks of atmospheric CO₂ and CH₄, and develop forecasts for future trends.

Science Questions

• What is the carbon balance of North America and adjacent oceans? What are the geographic patterns of fluxes of CO₂, CH₄, and CO? How is the balance changing over time?
• What processes control the sources and sinks of CO₂, CH₄, and CO, and how do the controls change with time?
• Are there potential surprises where sources increase or sinks disappear?
• How can we enhance and manage long-lived carbon sinks, and provide resources to support decision makers?

The NACP Science Steering Group (SSG) provides scientific leadership for the NACP. (NACP SSG)

Program Data: The data from most projects associated with the NACP program are not managed by BCO-DMO.  Information about most projects and their results are available from the Program and Data site URLs shown above.  However, some exceptions are the NACP/OCB coastal synthesis projects listed below when the project section is expanded.