Global Carbon Budget 2020

Abstract

Abstract. Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate – 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 and synthesize data sets and methodology to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO2 emissions (EFOS) 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 (2010–2019), EFOS was 9.6 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 excluding the cement carbonation sink (9.4 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 when the cement carbonation sink is included), and ELUC was 1.6 ± 0.7 GtC yr−1. For the same decade, GATM was 5.1 ± 0.02 GtC yr−1 (2.4 ± 0.01 ppm yr−1), SOCEAN 2.5 ± 0.6 GtC yr−1, and SLAND 3.4 ± 0.9 GtC yr−1, with a budget imbalance BIM of −0.1 GtC yr−1 indicating a near balance between estimated sources and sinks over the last decade. For the year 2019 alone, the growth in EFOS was only about 0.1 % with fossil emissions increasing to 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 excluding the cement carbonation sink (9.7 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 when cement carbonation sink is included), and ELUC was 1.8 ± 0.7 GtC yr−1, for total anthropogenic CO2 emissions of 11.5 ± 0.9 GtC yr−1 (42.2 ± 3.3 GtCO2). Also for 2019, GATM was 5.4 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1 (2.5 ± 0.1 ppm yr−1), SOCEAN was 2.6 ± 0.6 GtC yr−1, and SLAND was 3.1 ± 1.2 GtC yr−1, with a BIM of 0.3 GtC. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 409.85 ± 0.1 ppm averaged over 2019. Preliminary data for 2020, accounting for the COVID-19-induced changes in emissions, suggest a decrease in EFOS relative to 2019 of about −7 % (median estimate) based on individual estimates from four studies of −6 %, −7 %, −7 % (−3 % to −11 %), and −13 %. Overall, the mean and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2019, but discrepancies of up to 1 GtC yr−1 persist for the representation of semi-decadal variability in CO2 fluxes. Comparison of estimates from diverse approaches and 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 discrepancy between the different methods for the ocean sink outside the tropics, particularly in the Southern Ocean. 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 (Friedlingstein et al., 2019; Le Quéré et al., 2018b, a, 2016, 2015b, a, 2014, 2013). The data presented in this work are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/gcp-2020 (Friedlingstein et al., 2020).

Keywords

Affiliated Institutions

• National Institute for Space Research BR
• Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace FR
• National Institute for Environmental Studies JP
• NSF NCAR Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory US
• National Oceanography Centre GB
• Sorbonne Université FR
• University of Exeter GB
• Wageningen University & Research NL
• Meteorological Research Institute
• Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology JP
• University of Groningen NL
• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology DE
• Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences US
• 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
• CEA Paris-Saclay FR
• University of Edinburgh GB
• NORCE Research AS
• Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique FR
• Appalachian State University US
• Met Office GB
• Plymouth Marine Laboratory GB
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign US
• GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel DE
• Météo-France FR
• University of East Anglia GB
• CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere AU
• Forest Institute US
• Institut de Recherche pour le Développement FR
• Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde DE
• Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology CN
• Tsinghua University CN
• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam NL
• Tyndall Centre GB
• Université Paris-Saclay FR
• Marine and Freshwater Research Institute IS
• Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry DE
• Woodwell Climate Research Center US
• Flanders Marine Institute BE
• Université Paris Sciences et Lettres FR
• Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives FR
• NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory US
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration US
• Hakai Institute
• NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research US
• Norwich Research Park GB
• Australian Antarctic Division AU
• École Polytechnique FR
• Sun Yat-sen University CN
• 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
• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis AT
• Tula Foundation CA
• University of Southampton GB
• Auburn University US
• University of Maryland, College Park US
• Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique FR
• NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratories US
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory US
• Stanford University US
• Japan Meteorological Agency JP
• ETH Zurich CH
• Institute of Applied Energy JP
• Princeton University US
• University of Bern CH
• Max Planck Institute for Meteorology DE
• National Centre for Earth Observation GB
• Laboratoire d'Océanographie et du Climat : Expérimentations et Approches Numériques FR
• University of Leeds GB
• Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences BM
• University of Bergen
• University of Washington US
• Goddard Space Flight Center US
• Université Fédérale de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées FR
• University of Tasmania AU
• CICERO Center for International Climate Research

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