About

RECCAP-2 Climate Space project

This project exploits Earth observation data to generate more accurate and improved greenhouse gas (GHG) budgets for key land regions where uncertainties remain significant. Four regions crucial to the global carbon budget have been selected for study: Europe, Siberia, the Amazon, and the Arctic. The project aims to:

• Reduce uncertainty in carbon emissions from sources and removals by sinks
• Facilitate accurate attribution to anthropogenic and global change drivers
• Inform effective climate mitigation strategies
• Support national and global action plans, monitoring, and progress reporting towards the UNFCCC Paris Agreement goals

The project is integrating satellite-derived data records, including those generated via the ESA Climate Change Initiative, into atmospheric inversion models to develop carbon stock and flux estimates of CO₂ and CH₄.

Once developed, the new Earth observation-based regional carbon stock and change estimates will contribute towards improving the global land carbon budget. This will be achieved through periodic evaluations and reconciliation with national GHG inventories, using a mature framework which in turn support the Global Stocktake mechanism of the UNFCCC Paris Agreement.

Focus Issues

1. Reducing uncertainties in regional CO₂ and CH₄ fluxes due to ecosystems response to climatic variations and land-use changes.
2. Improve the alignment between bottom-up (inventory-based) and top-down (atmospheric observation-based) approaches for global carbon and methane budgets.
3. Use EO-data to overcome some limitations of national inventories in capturing rapid changes (e.g., droughts, extreme fires).
4. Deliver frequent EO-data, products and analyses to monitor countries' progress in meeting emission reduction pledges under the Paris Agreement.

The Project Aims To

• Develop a global framework combining satellite data and data-driven modelling approaches to estimate GHG fluxes over four key regions and compare, reconcile them with national inventories.
• Reduce the imbalance between sources and sinks in the global carbon budget by targeting key regions where uncertainties are particularly high.
• Reconcile EO-based GHG flux estimates with inventory methodologies, improving monitoring of land-use changes and natural fluxes.

Output of the RECCAP2-CS Project

• High-resolution spatially explicit CO₂ and CH₄ fluxes for critical regions, including Europe, Siberia, Amazon, and Arctic peatlands.
• Integration of satellite-based ECVs into bottom-up and top-down approaches to improve regional and global carbon budgets.
• A reconciled framework that supports inventory compilers and climate policy stakeholders with enhanced tools for tracking GHG emissions and removals.
• Annual updates of global biomass carbon changes based on passive microwave time series to better understand land carbon stock change anomalies and trends related to extreme events and land-use changes.

The project is structured into three phases:

• Phase 1: EO-based GHG accounting system setup for each region and defining scientific requirements, including stages for requirements specification and system design with iterative feedback.
• Phase 2: developing data processing codes and producing regional GHG budgets from bottom-up, top-down, and inventory approaches, along with uncertainty assessments and initial synthesis for case study regions.
• Phase 3: implementing a pre-operational system for regional GHG budgets, enabling annual updates (year n-1) and providing diagnostics, user feedback, and data visualization to ensure usability and integration with reporting procedures.

Each phase emphasises collaboration with ESA and the inventory community to refine system requirements, results, and performance.