Global carbon budget 2017

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2018-03-12
Authors
Le Quere, Corinne
Andrew, Robbie M.
Friedlingstein, Pierre
Sitch, Stephen
Pongratz, Julia
Manning, Andrew C.
Korsbakken, Jan Ivar
Peters, Glen P.
Canadell, Josep G.
Jackson, Robert B.
Boden, Thomas A.
Tans, Pieter P.
Andrews, Oliver D.
Arora, Vivek K.
Bakker, Dorothee
Barbero, Leticia
Becker, Meike
Betts, Richard A.
Bopp, Laurent
Chevallier, Frédéric
Chini, Louise Parsons
Ciais, Philippe
Cosca, Catherine E.
Cross, Jessica N.
Currie, Kim I.
Gasser, Thomas
Harris, Ian
Hauck, Judith
Haverd, Vanessa
Houghton, Richard A.
Hunt, Christopher W.
Hurtt, George
Ilyina, Tatiana
Jain, Atul K.
Kato, Etsushi
Kautz, Markus
Keeling, Ralph F.
Klein Goldewijk, Kees
Körtzinger, Arne
Landschützer, Peter
Lefèvre, Nathalie
Lenton, Andrew
Lienert, Sebastian
Lima, Ivan D.
Lombardozzi, Danica
Metzl, Nicolas
Millero, Frank J.
Monteiro, Pedro M. S.
Munro, David R.
Nabel, Julia E. M. S.
Nakaoka, Shin-ichiro
Nojiri, Yukihiro
Padin, X. Antonio
Peregon, Anna
Pfeil, Benjamin
Pierrot, Denis
Poulter, Benjamin
Rehder, Gregor
Reimer, Janet
Rödenbeck, Christian
Schwinger, Jorg
Séférian, Roland
Skjelvan, Ingunn
Stocker, Benjamin D.
Tian, Hanqin
Tilbrook, Bronte
Tubiello, Francesco N.
van der Laan-Luijkx, Ingrid T.
van der Werf, Guido R.
van Heuven, Steven
Viovy, Nicolas
Vuichard, Nicolas
Walker, Anthony P.
Watson, Andrew J.
Wiltshire, Andrew J.
Zaehle, Sonke
Zhu, Dan
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10.5194/essd-10-405-2018
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Abstract
Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere – the "global carbon budget" – is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe data sets and methodology to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry (EFF) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, respectively, while emissions from land-use change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on land-cover change data and bookkeeping models. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) and terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) are estimated with global process models constrained by observations. The resulting carbon budget imbalance (BIM), the difference between the estimated total emissions and the estimated changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere, is a measure of imperfect data and understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the last decade available (2007–2016), EFF was 9.4 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, ELUC 1.3 ± 0.7 GtC yr−1, GATM 4.7 ± 0.1 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN 2.4 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, and SLAND 3.0 ± 0.8 GtC yr−1, with a budget imbalance BIM of 0.6 GtC yr−1 indicating overestimated emissions and/or underestimated sinks. For year 2016 alone, the growth in EFF was approximately zero and emissions remained at 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1. Also for 2016, ELUC was 1.3 ± 0.7 GtC yr−1, GATM was 6.1 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN was 2.6 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, and SLAND was 2.7 ± 1.0 GtC yr−1, with a small BIM of −0.3 GtC. GATM continued to be higher in 2016 compared to the past decade (2007–2016), reflecting in part the high fossil emissions and the small SLAND consistent with El Niño conditions. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 402.8 ± 0.1 ppm averaged over 2016. For 2017, preliminary data for the first 6–9 months indicate a renewed growth in EFF of +2.0 % (range of 0.8 to 3.0 %) based on national emissions projections for China, USA, and India, and projections of gross domestic product (GDP) corrected for recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy for the rest of the world. This living data update documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new global carbon budget compared with previous publications of this data set (Le Quéré et al., 2016, 2015b, a, 2014, 2013). All results presented here can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.18160/GCP-2017 (GCP, 2017).
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© The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Earth System Science Data 10 (2018): 405-448, doi:10.5194/essd-10-405-2018.
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Earth System Science Data 10 (2018): 405-448
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