Special issue  

The International Carbon Dioxide Conference (ICDC) is the single largest conference organized by the global research community every four years to present the latest scientific findings on the science of the carbon cycle and its perturbation by human activities. The ICDC in 2013 is the 9th conference. The conference topics encompass the global carbon cycle, global and regional budgets, and processes with specialized sessions on the individual components of atmosphere, ocean and land, in the time frames of past, present and future. It covers both fundamental science advancement and discovery, the generation of policy relevant information, and new technological observational platforms, data sets, and modeling approaches.

The three main themes of the conference are as follows:

• Theme 1: past and present changes and variability;
• Theme 2: carbon sources and sinks, their changes and trends;
• Theme 3: future of the carbon cycle: drivers, vulnerabilities, feedbacks and management options.

Conference website: http://icdc9.lasg.ac.cn.