Global Carbon Budget 2019

Abstract

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. Fossil CO2 emissions (EFF) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land use change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on land use and land use change data and bookkeeping models. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its growth rate (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 (2009–2018), EFF was 9.5±0.5 GtC yr−1, ELUC 1.5±0.7 GtC yr−1, GATM 4.9±0.02 GtC yr−1 (2.3±0.01 ppm yr−1), SOCEAN 2.5±0.6 GtC yr−1, and SLAND 3.2±0.6 GtC yr−1, with a budget imbalance BIM of 0.4 GtC yr−1 indicating overestimated emissions and/or underestimated sinks. For the year 2018 alone, the growth in EFF was about 2.1 % and fossil emissions increased to 10.0±0.5 GtC yr−1, reaching 10 GtC yr−1 for the first time in history, ELUC was 1.5±0.7 GtC yr−1, for total anthropogenic CO2 emissions of 11.5±0.9 GtC yr−1 (42.5±3.3 GtCO2). Also for 2018, GATM was 5.1±0.2 GtC yr−1 (2.4±0.1 ppm yr−1), SOCEAN was 2.6±0.6 GtC yr−1, and SLAND was 3.5±0.7 GtC yr−1, with a BIM of 0.3 GtC. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 407.38±0.1 ppm averaged over 2018. For 2019, preliminary data for the first 6–10 months indicate a reduced growth in EFF of +0.6 % (range of −0.2 % to 1.5 %) based on national emissions projections for China, the USA, the EU, and India and projections of gross domestic product corrected for recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy for the rest of the world. Overall, the mean and trend in the five components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2018, but discrepancies of up to 1 GtC yr−1 persist for the representation of semi-decadal variability in CO2 fluxes. A detailed comparison among individual estimates and the introduction of a broad range of observations shows (1) no consensus in the mean and trend in land use change emissions over the last decade, (2) a persistent low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO2 flux in the northern extra-tropics, and (3) an apparent underestimation of the CO2 variability by ocean models outside the tropics. This living data update documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new global carbon budget and the progress in understanding of the global carbon cycle compared with previous publications of this data set (Le Quéré et al., 2018a, b, 2016, 2015a, b, 2014, 2013). The data generated by this work are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/gcp-2019 (Friedlingstein et al., 2019).

Keywords

Affiliated Institutions

• Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace FR
• National Institute for Environmental Studies JP
• NSF NCAR Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory US
• Sorbonne Université FR
• University of Exeter GB
• Wageningen University & Research NL
• Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology JP
• University of Groningen NL
• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology DE
• Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences RU
• Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences US
• University of Reading GB
• NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory US
• Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung DE
• Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research CH
• Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München DE
• Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency JP
• NORCE Research AS
• Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique FR
• Appalachian State University US
• Met Office GB
• GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel DE
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign US
• Météo-France FR
• University of East Anglia GB
• CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere AU
• Forest Institute US
• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations IT
• Institut de Recherche pour le Développement FR
• Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde DE
• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam NL
• Tyndall Centre GB
• Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry DE
• Woodwell Climate Research Center US
• Flanders Marine Institute BE
• National Centre for Atmospheric Science GB
• Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives FR
• NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory US
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration US
• NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research US
• Norwich Research Park GB
• Australian Antarctic Division AU
• Lund University SE
• Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency NL
• University of Colorado Boulder US
• Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines FR
• Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement FR
• Environment and Climate Change Canada CA
• Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research
• Auburn University US
• University of Miami US
• University of Maryland, College Park US
• Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique FR
• NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratories US
• Russian Academy of Sciences RU
• Stanford University US
• Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques FR
• University of Hong Kong HK
• ETH Zurich CH
• University of Augsburg DE
• Institute of Applied Energy JP
• Princeton University US
• University of Bern CH
• Max Planck Institute for Meteorology DE
• Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat : Expérimentations et Approches Numériques FR
• University of Bergen
• Goddard Space Flight Center US
• University of Tasmania AU
• CICERO Center for International Climate Research

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