Global carbon budget 2018

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 (E-FF) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land use and land-use change (E-LUC), 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 (G(ATM)) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The ocean CO2 sink (S-OCEAN) and terrestrial CO2 sink (S-LAND) are estimated with global process models constrained by observations. The resulting carbon budget imbalance (B-IM), 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 +/- 1 sigma. For the last decade available (2008-2017), E-FF was 9.4 +/- 0.5 GtC yr(-1), E-LUC 1.5 +/- 0.7 GtC yr(-1), G(ATM) 4.7 +/- 0.02 GtC yr(-1), S-OCEAN 2.4 +/- 0.5 GtC yr(-1), and S-LAND 3.2 +/- 0.8 GtC yr(-1), with a budget imbalance B-IM of 0.5 GtC yr(-1) indicating overestimated emissions and/or underestimated sinks. For the year 2017 alone, the growth in E-FF was about 1.6 % and emissions increased to 9.9 +/- 0.5 GtC yr(-1). Also for 2017, E-LUC was 1.4 +/- 0.7 GtC yr(-1), G(ATM) was 4.6 +/- 0.2 GtC yr(-1), S-OCEAN was 2.5 +/- 0.5 GtC yr(-1), and S-LAND was 3.8 +/- 0.8 GtC yr(-1), with a B-IM of 0.3 GtC. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 405.0 +/- 0.1 ppm averaged over 2017. For 2018, preliminary data for the first 6-9 months indicate a renewed growth in E-FF of +2.7 % (range of 1.8 % to 3.7 %) based on national emission projections for China, the US, 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. The analysis presented here shows that the mean and trend in the five components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period of 1959-2017, 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 show (1) no consensus in the mean and trend in land -use change emissions, (2) a persistent low agreement among 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, originating outside the tropics.

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Related Links

Related Dataset #1 : HIPPO Merged 10-Second Meteorology, Atmospheric Chemistry, and Aerosol Data. Version 1.0

Related Dataset #2 : Multi-laboratory compilation of atmospheric carbon dioxide data for the years 2016-2017; obspack_co2_1_NRT_v3.3_2017-04-19

Related Dataset #3 : Harmonization of global land use scenarios (LUH2): Historical v2.1h 850 - 2015

Related Dataset #4 : Atmospheric CO2 mole fraction data of CONTRAIL-CME

Related Dataset #5 : Multi-laboratory compilation of atmospheric carbon dioxide data for the period 1957-2015; obspack_co2_1_GLOBALVIEWplus_v2.1_2016-09-02

Related Dataset #6 : Supplemental data of Global Carbon Project 2018

Related Dataset #7 : ACT-America: L2 In Situ Atmospheric CO2, CO, CH4, and O3 Concentrations, Eastern USA

Related Dataset #8 : ORCAS Merge Products. Version 1.0
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Author Le Quéré, C.
Andrew, R. M.
Friedlingstein, P.
Sitch, S.
Hauck, J.
Pongratz, J.
Pickers, P. A.
Korsbakken, J. I.
Peters, G. P.
Canadell, J. G.
Arneth, A.
Arora, V. K.
Barbero, L.
Bastos, A.
Bopp, L.
Chevallier, F.
Chini, L. P.
Ciais, P.
Doney, S. C.
Gkritzalis, T.
Goll, D. S.
Harris, I.
Haverd, V.
Hoffman, F. M.
Hoppema, M.
Houghton, R. A.
Hurtt, G.
Ilyina, T.
Jain, A. K.
Johannessen, T.
Jones, C. D.
Kato, E.
Keeling, R. F.
Goldewijk, K. K.
Landschützer, P.
Lefèvre, N.
Lienert, S.
Liu, Z.
Lombardozzi, Danica
Metzl, N.
Munro, D. R.
Nabel, J. E. M. S.
Nakaoka, S.
Neill, C.
Olsen, A.
Ono, T.
Patra, P.
Peregon, A.
Peters, W.
Peylin, P.
Pfeil, B.
Pierrot, D.
Poulter, B.
Rehder, G.
Resplandy, L.
Robertson, E.
Rocher, M.
Rödenbeck, C.
Schuster, U.
Schwinger, J.
Séférian, R.
Skjelvan, I.
Steinhoff, T.
Sutton, A.
Tans, P. P.
Tian, H.
Tilbrook, B.
Tubiello, F. N.
van der Laan-Luijkx, I. T.
van der Werf, G. R.
Viovy, N.
Walker, A. P.
Wiltshire, A. J.
Wright, R.
Zaehle, S.
Zheng, B.
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2018-12-05T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
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Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2025-07-11T19:32:45.023874
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:22191
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Le Quéré, C., Andrew, R. M., Friedlingstein, P., Sitch, S., Hauck, J., Pongratz, J., Pickers, P. A., Korsbakken, J. I., Peters, G. P., Canadell, J. G., Arneth, A., Arora, V. K., Barbero, L., Bastos, A., Bopp, L., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Ciais, P., Doney, S. C., Gkritzalis, T., Goll, D. S., Harris, I., Haverd, V., Hoffman, F. M., Hoppema, M., Houghton, R. A., Hurtt, G., Ilyina, T., Jain, A. K., Johannessen, T., Jones, C. D., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Goldewijk, K. K., Landschützer, P., Lefèvre, N., Lienert, S., Liu, Z., Lombardozzi, Danica, Metzl, N., Munro, D. R., Nabel, J. E. M. S., Nakaoka, S., Neill, C., Olsen, A., Ono, T., Patra, P., Peregon, A., Peters, W., Peylin, P., Pfeil, B., Pierrot, D., Poulter, B., Rehder, G., Resplandy, L., Robertson, E., Rocher, M., Rödenbeck, C., Schuster, U., Schwinger, J., Séférian, R., Skjelvan, I., Steinhoff, T., Sutton, A., Tans, P. P., Tian, H., Tilbrook, B., Tubiello, F. N., van der Laan-Luijkx, I. T., van der Werf, G. R., Viovy, N., Walker, A. P., Wiltshire, A. J., Wright, R., Zaehle, S., Zheng, B.. (2018). Global carbon budget 2018. UCAR/NCAR - Library. https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d78055k6. Accessed 09 August 2025.

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