SNOWCARBO: Monitoring and assessment of carbon balance related phenomena in Finland and northern Eurasia

SnowCarbo project is funded by the European commission (EC) Life+ program. The project was started at the beginning of January 2009 and it will end in December 2012. Coordinating Beneficiary of SnowCarbo project is Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and Associated Beneficiary(ies) are Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), and Commissariat a l´energie atomique Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l´Environnement (CEA-LSCE). The main objective of the Snowcarbo project is to implement and demonstrate a new innovative approach for the net CO₂ balance mapping in northern Finland and northern Eurasian region. The approach employs connected REMO regional climate and JSBACH ecosystem models [1,2,3] and is based on a combination of different information sources describing snow evolution, phenology, land cover, CO₂ fluxes and concentrations. The implemented method combines local in situ observations and global Earth Observation satellite data together with land cover class information in a new way. Snowcarbo aims to produce carbon dioxide balance maps over northern Finland and northern Eurasia by combining different earth observation data sources and modeling of CO₂ balance.