Trends and drivers of terrestrial sources and sinks of carbon dioxide: An overview of the TRENDY project

The terrestrial biosphere plays a major role in the global carbon cycle, and there is a recognized need for regularly updated estimates of land-atmosphere exchange at regional and global scales. An international ensemble of Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs), known as the "Trends and drivers of the regional scale terrestrial sources and sinks of carbon dioxide" (TRENDY) project, quantifies land biophysical exchange processes and biogeochemistry cycles in support of the annual Global Carbon Budget assessments and the REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes, phase 2 project. DGVMs use a common protocol and set of driving data sets. A set of factorial simulations allows attribution of spatio-temporal changes in land surface processes to three primary global change drivers: changes in atmospheric CO2, climate change and variability, and Land Use and Land Cover Changes (LULCC). Here, we describe the TRENDY project, benchmark DGVM performance using remote-sensing and other observational data, and present results for the contemporary period. Simulation results show a large global carbon sink in natural vegetation over 2012-2021, attributed to the CO2 fertilization effect (3.8 +/- 0.8 PgC/yr) and climate (-0.58 +/- 0.54 PgC/yr). Forests and semi-arid ecosystems contribute approximately equally to the mean and trend in the natural land sink, and semi-arid ecosystems continue to dominate interannual variability. The natural sink is offset by net emissions from LULCC (-1.6 +/- 0.5 PgC/yr), with a net land sink of 1.7 +/- 0.6 PgC/yr. Despite the largest gross fluxes being in the tropics, the largest net land-atmosphere exchange is simulated in the extratropical regions.

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Related Dataset #1 : CCMI nitrogen surface fluxes in support of CMIP6 - version 2.0

Related Dataset #2 : Regridded Harmonized World Soil Database v1.2

Related Dataset #3 : ESA Biomass Climate Change Initiative (Biomass_cci): Global datasets of forest above-ground biomass for the years 2010, 2017 and 2018, v3
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Author Sitch, S.
O'Sullivan, M.
Robertson, E.
Friedlingstein, P.
Albergel, C.
Anthoni, P.
Arneth, A.
Arora, V. K.
Bastos, A.
Bastrikov, V.
Bellouin, N.
Canadell, J. G.
Chini, L.
Ciais, P.
Falk, S.
Harris, I.
Hurtt, G.
Ito, A.
Jain, A. K.
Jones, M. W.
Joos, F.
Kato, E.
Kennedy, Daniel
Klein Goldewijk, K.
Kluzek, Erik
Knauer, J.
Lawrence, Peter J.
Lombardozzi, Danica
Melton, J. R.
Nabel, J. E. M. S.
Pan, N.
Peylin, P.
Pongratz, J.
Poulter, B.
Rosan, T. M.
Sun, Q.
Tian, H.
Walker, A. P.
Weber, U.
Yuan, W.
Yue, X.
Zaehle, S.
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2024-07-19T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
Alternate Identifier N/A
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2025-07-10T20:00:20.263881
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:27391
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Sitch, S., O'Sullivan, M., Robertson, E., Friedlingstein, P., Albergel, C., Anthoni, P., Arneth, A., Arora, V. K., Bastos, A., Bastrikov, V., Bellouin, N., Canadell, J. G., Chini, L., Ciais, P., Falk, S., Harris, I., Hurtt, G., Ito, A., Jain, A. K., Jones, M. W., Joos, F., Kato, E., Kennedy, Daniel, Klein Goldewijk, K., Kluzek, Erik, Knauer, J., Lawrence, Peter J., Lombardozzi, Danica, Melton, J. R., Nabel, J. E. M. S., Pan, N., Peylin, P., Pongratz, J., Poulter, B., Rosan, T. M., Sun, Q., Tian, H., Walker, A. P., Weber, U., Yuan, W., Yue, X., Zaehle, S.. (2024). Trends and drivers of terrestrial sources and sinks of carbon dioxide: An overview of the TRENDY project. UCAR/NCAR - Library. https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7st7v3w. Accessed 03 August 2025.

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