The latest figures on the global carbon budget to be released in Washington and Paris today indicate a four-fold increase in growth rate of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions since 2000.

Today the new Global Carbon Budget was launched simultaneously by Global Carbon Project co-chair Michael Raupach in France at the Paris Observatory, and in the USA at Capitol Hill, Washington by GCP Executive Director Pep Canadell.

As climate change becomes more and more a central issue in local, national, and international discussions, understanding the global carbon budget, and how it influences trends in global warming, will become increasingly crucial. The carbon cycle is related to climate and climatic change because it controls carbon dioxide, the most important of the greenhouse gases.

Life as we know it, from the most basic microbes to our human neighbors, is carbon based. By investigating how carbon cycles through ecosystems, scientists can learn valuable information about food chains, nutrient cycling, and productivity. Because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, with the ability to influence temperature, an accurate global carbon budget is needed to address climate change.