Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Global Carbon Project is an international scientific organisation founded in 2001 to quantify global greenhouse gas emissions and understand the carbon cycle. It was established as a partnership among the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, the World Climate Programme, the International Human Dimensions Programme, and Diversitas. Its executive director is Josep Canadell of Australia's CSIRO.
The GCP's 2018 Global Carbon Budget projected that fossil CO2 emissions would rise by 2.7% to a record 37.1 billion tonnes. Atmospheric CO2 concentration was on track to average 407 parts per million, which the project noted was 45% above pre-industrial levels. Natural gas and oil were identified as the primary drivers of the increase.
The Global Carbon Budget is an annual publication of carbon cycle sources and sinks established by the GCP in 2005. Since 2013, it has been a living data publication hosted at the Earth System Science Data journal, with figures revised and updated each year. Data comes from multiple organisations worldwide, including CDIAC for fossil-fuel emissions and NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory for atmospheric CO2 growth rates.
A 2010 GCP study published in Nature Geoscience found that the world's oceans absorb approximately 2.3 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. Oceans function as a partial brake on atmospheric warming by drawing down a portion of emissions from fossil fuels and land-use change.
The GCP tracks carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, the three dominant greenhouse gases. In 2020, it released its newest Global Methane Budget and its first-ever Global Nitrous Oxide Budget. Methane and nitrous oxide are described by the project as the two anthropogenic trace gases most dominant for warming after carbon dioxide.
The Global Carbon Atlas is a web-based data visualisation platform established by the GCP in 2013. It has three components: an outreach component for the general public and educators, an emissions component aimed at policy makers, and a research component serving scientists. All components are updated annually based on data from the Global Carbon Budget.