The carbon cycle for a general audience: where our emissions go, what satellites can see, and what the numbers actually mean.
Land and ocean absorb roughly half of the carbon dioxide we emit each year. Whether they continue to is one of the biggest open questions in climate science, and THRAC3E measures the land side of it from space. This category discusses that work in everyday language, for anyone with an interest in it rather than a specialism.
Why use it?
To read plain-language summaries of what the project finds, to ask about forests, wildfire, drought and the carbon cycle, and to get answers from the people doing the research.
How is it different?
The other categories are open to everyone too, but here plain language is the rule rather than the courtesy. Acronyms get spelled out, and “I don’t follow this” is a perfectly good post.
What topics should contain:
One clear question, or one idea clearly explained. Explainers, infographics, maps, animations and news stories belong here. Researchers posting here: assume no prior knowledge, and take the question as asked.
Do we need it?
Yes. Making results accessible to the wider public is an explicit commitment of the project, and this is the category built for it.
Tagging
Add up to five tags per topic, working down the tiers: one for what it is (maps, data, models, reports), one for what it’s about (carbon-cycle, carbon-budget, fire-emissions, plant-growth-gpp, fuel, biomass, consumption), then any that describe the detail (earth-observations, simulations, regional, temporal, resolution, uncertainty, grid), keeping the last slot for something specific such as fire-data-gfed5 or veg-model-dgvm.