Global carbon budget 2016

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 all major components of the global carbon budget, including their uncertainties, based on the combination of a range of data, algorithms, statistics, and model estimates and their interpretation by a broad scientific community. We discuss changes compared to previous estimates and consistency within and among components, alongside methodology and data limitations. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry (E-FF) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, respectively, while emissions from land-use change (E-LUC), mainly deforestation, are based on combined evidence from land-cover change data, fire activity associated with deforestation, and models. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (G(ATM)) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The mean ocean CO2 sink (S-OCEAN) is based on observations from the 1990s, while the annual anomalies and trends are estimated with ocean models. The variability in S-OCEAN is evaluated with data products based on surveys of ocean CO2 measurements. The global residual terrestrial CO2 sink (S-LAND) is estimated by the difference of the other terms of the global carbon budget and compared to results of independent dynamic global vegetation models. We compare the mean land and ocean fluxes and their variability to estimates from three atmospheric inverse methods for three broad latitude bands. All uncertainties are reported as +/- 1 sigma, reflecting the current capacity to characterise the annual estimates of each component of the global carbon budget. For the last decade available (2006-2015), E-FF was 9.3 +/- 0.5 GtC yr(-1), E-LUC 1.0 +/- 0.5 GtC yr(-1), G(ATM) 4.5 +/- 0.1 GtC yr(-1), S-OCEAN 2.6 +/- 0.5 GtC yr(-1), and S-LAND 3.1 +/- 0.9 GtC yr(-1). For year 2015 alone, the growth in E-FF was approximately zero and emissions remained at 9.9 +/- 0.5 GtC yr(-1), showing a slowdown in growth of these emissions compared to the average growth of 1.8% yr(-1) that took place during 2006-2015. Also, for 2015, E-LUC was 1.3 +/- 0.5 GtC yr(-1), G(ATM) was 6.3 +/- 0.2 GtC yr(-1), S-OCEAN was 3.0 +/- 0.5 GtC yr(-1), and S-LAND was 1.9 +/- 0.9 GtC yr(-1). G(ATM) was higher in 2015 compared to the past decade (2006-2015), reflecting a smaller S-LAND for that year. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 399.4 +/- 0.1 ppm averaged over 2015. For 2016, preliminary data indicate the continuation of low growth in E-FF with +0.2% (range of -1.0 to +1.8 %) based on national emissions projections for China and USA, and projections of gross domestic product corrected for recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy for the rest of the world.

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Author Le Quéré, Corinne
Andrew, Robbie M.
Canadell, Josep G.
Sitch, Stephen
Korsbakken, Jan Ivar
Peters, Glen P.
Manning, Andrew C.
Boden, Thomas A.
Tans, Pieter P.
Houghton, Richard A.
Keeling, Ralph F.
Alin, Simone
Andrews, Oliver D.
Anthoni, Peter
Barbero, Leticia
Bopp, Laurent
Chevallier, Frédéric
Chini, Louise P.
Ciais, Philippe
Currie, Kim
Delire, Christine
Doney, Scott C.
Friedlingstein, Pierre
Gkritzalis, Thanos
Harris, Ian
Hauck, Judith
Haverd, Vanessa
Hoppema, Mario
Klein Goldewijk, Kees
Jain, Atul K.
Kato, Etsushi
Körtzinger, Arne
Landschützer, Peter
Lefèvre, Nathalie
Lenton, Andrew
Lienert, Sebastian
Lombardozzi, Danica
Melton, Joe R.
Metzl, Nicolas
Millero, Frank
Monteiro, Pedro M. S.
Munro, David R.
Nabel, Julia E. M. S.
Nakaoka, Shin-ichiro
O'Brien, Kevin
Olsen, Are
Omar, Abdirahman M.
Ono, Tsuneo
Pierrot, Denis
Poulter, Benjamin
Rödenbeck, Christian
Salisbury, Joe
Schuster, Ute
Schwinger, Jörg
Séférian, Roland
Skjelvan, Ingunn
Stocker, Benjamin D.
Sutton, Adrienne J.
Takahashi, Taro
Tian, Hanqin
Tilbrook, Bronte
van der Laan-Luijkx, Ingrid T.
van der Werf, Guido R.
Viovy, Nicolas
Walker, Anthony P.
Wiltshire, Andrew J.
Zaehle, Sönke
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2016-11-14T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
Alternate Identifier N/A
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
Progress N/A
Metadata Date 2023-08-18T19:10:12.240382
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:19595
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Le Quéré, Corinne, Andrew, Robbie M., Canadell, Josep G., Sitch, Stephen, Korsbakken, Jan Ivar, Peters, Glen P., Manning, Andrew C., Boden, Thomas A., Tans, Pieter P., Houghton, Richard A., Keeling, Ralph F., Alin, Simone, Andrews, Oliver D., Anthoni, Peter, Barbero, Leticia, Bopp, Laurent, Chevallier, Frédéric, Chini, Louise P., Ciais, Philippe, Currie, Kim, Delire, Christine, Doney, Scott C., Friedlingstein, Pierre, Gkritzalis, Thanos, Harris, Ian, Hauck, Judith, Haverd, Vanessa, Hoppema, Mario, Klein Goldewijk, Kees, Jain, Atul K., Kato, Etsushi, Körtzinger, Arne, Landschützer, Peter, Lefèvre, Nathalie, Lenton, Andrew, Lienert, Sebastian, Lombardozzi, Danica, Melton, Joe R., Metzl, Nicolas, Millero, Frank, Monteiro, Pedro M. S., Munro, David R., Nabel, Julia E. M. S., Nakaoka, Shin-ichiro, O'Brien, Kevin, Olsen, Are, Omar, Abdirahman M., Ono, Tsuneo, Pierrot, Denis, Poulter, Benjamin, Rödenbeck, Christian, Salisbury, Joe, Schuster, Ute, Schwinger, Jörg, Séférian, Roland, Skjelvan, Ingunn, Stocker, Benjamin D., Sutton, Adrienne J., Takahashi, Taro, Tian, Hanqin, Tilbrook, Bronte, van der Laan-Luijkx, Ingrid T., van der Werf, Guido R., Viovy, Nicolas, Walker, Anthony P., Wiltshire, Andrew J., Zaehle, Sönke. (2016). Global carbon budget 2016. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7b859w8. Accessed 23 June 2025.

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