FACE - Free-Air CO2 Enrichment

Free-Air CO₂ Enrichment (FACE) is not the most contrived acronym in the world but it’s worth a quick mention because (1) I am involved in a project looking at the effects of elevated CO₂ and (2) it is one of those acronyms that, whilst hard to Google without extra keywords, gives lots of opportunities for punny titles. (And who doesn’t love a punny title now and again.) Indeed, one such punny title was the inspiration of today’s post, an ecology Editor’s Choice article in Science: “About FACE” (Sugden AM, 2013. Science 341: 938).

As faces do emit CO₂ and, by doing so, enrich the free-air CO₂, I’m rating FACE as post hoc. (Although I don’t think that’s what they had in mind!)