Global warming has been one of the biggest issues the whole world has been facing for the past decades. It is closely related to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and the effects of reducing emissions and increasing the carbon fixation capability. China, as a large country with rapid economic and social development, has a major share in both GHG emissions and carbon fixation. During 2011–15, a "Strategic Scientific Pioneering Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)" was conducted to study the carbon budget and climate change. A special issue on some of the Program’s outcome is published in early July by Advances in Atmospheric Sciences (AAS).

Under the framework of the 7,200 million Chinese yuan Program, about 50 CAS institutes, universities and other national ministries, comprising some 4000 scientists, investigated major questions including the accurate estimation of national anthropogenic GHG emissions, quantitative verification of the terrestrial carbon budget, the carbon sequestration rate and potential of increasing the carbon sink, techniques and technology of such an increase in China, and uncertainties regarding the relationship between future global warming scenarios and concentrations of GHGs.

The PI of the Program, Prof. Daren Lu from CAS Institute of Atmospheric Physics, also a member of CAS, said in the preface, "Up to the end of 2016, more than 2900 papers related to above projects had been published in international and domestic scientific journals…papers in present special issue supply the further understanding of the climate change related natural and anthropogenic influences." 

The cover of the special issue features the global carbon flux as measured from space (Image by AAS)

The AAS Special Issue on carbon budget program consists of eight papers on various topics, including aerosols and their radiative forcing, airborne observations of aerosols, CCN, and cloud–aerosol interaction, and the monitoring of CO2 from space.