Global Carbon Budget 2019

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 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 (2009-2018), E-FF was 9.5 +/- 0.5 GtC yr 1, E-LUC 1.5 +/- 0.7 GtC yr 1, G(ATM) 4.9 +/- 0.02 GtC yr(-1) (2.3 +/- 0.01 ppm yr(-1)), S-OCEAN 2.5 +/- 0.6 GtC yr(-1), and S-LAND 3.2 +/- 0.6 GtC yr(-1), with a budget imbalance B-IM of 0.4 GtC yr(-1) indicating overestimated emissions and/or underestimated sinks. For the year 2018 alone, the growth in E-FF 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, E-LUC 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 GtCO(2)). Also for 2018, G(ATM) was 5.1 +/- 0.2 GtC yr(-1) (2.4 +/- 0.1 ppm yr(-1)), S-OCEAN was 2.6 +/- 0.6 GtC yr(-1), and S-LAND was 3.5 +/- 0.7 GtC yr(-1), with a B-IM 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 E-FF 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.

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Related Links

Related Dataset #1 : Atmospheric CO2 mole fraction data of CONTRAIL-CME

Related Dataset #2 : JRA-55: Japanese 55-year Reanalysis, Daily 3-Hourly and 6-Hourly Data

Related Dataset #3 : Multi-laboratory compilation of atmospheric carbon dioxide data for the years 2018-2019; obspack_co2_1_NRT_v4.4.2_2019-06-10

Related Dataset #4 : Supplemental data of Global Carbon Project 2019

Related Dataset #5 : HIPPO Merged 10-Second Meteorology, Atmospheric Chemistry, and Aerosol Data. Version 1.0

Related Dataset #6 : Harmonization of global land use scenarios (LUH2): Historical v2.1h 850 - 2015
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Author Friedlingstein, Pierre
Jones, Matthew W.
O'Sullivan, Michael
Andrew, Robbie M.
Hauck, Judith
Peters, Glen P.
Peters, Wouter
Pongratz, Julia
Sitch, Stephen
Le Quéré, Corinne
Bakker, Dorothee C. E.
Canadell, Josep G.
Ciais, Philippe
Jackson, Robert B.
Anthoni, Peter
Barbero, Leticia
Bastos, Ana
Bastrikov, Vladislav
Becker, Meike
Bopp, Laurent
Buitenhuis, Erik
Chandra, Naveen
Chevallier, Frédéric
Chini, Louise P.
Currie, Kim I.
Feely, Richard A.
Gehlen, Marion
Gilfillan, Dennis
Gkritzalis, Thanos
Goll, Daniel S.
Gruber, Nicolas
Gutekunst, Sören
Harris, Ian
Haverd, Vanessa
Houghton, Richard A.
Hurtt, George
Ilyina, Tatiana
Jain, Atul K.
Joetzjer, Emilie
Kaplan, Jed O.
Kato, Etsushi
Klein Goldewijk, Kees
Korsbakken, Jan Ivar
Landschützer, Peter
Lauvset, Siv K.
Lefèvre, Nathalie
Lenton, Andrew
Lienert, Sebastian
Lombardozzi, Danica
Marland, Gregg
McGuire, Patrick C.
Melton, Joe R.
Metzl, Nicolas
Munro, David R.
Nabel, Julia E. M. S.
Nakaoka, Shin-Ichiro
Neill, Craig
Omar, Abdirahman M.
Ono, Tsuneo
Peregon, Anna
Pierrot, Denis
Poulter, Benjamin
Rehder, Gregor
Resplandy, Laure
Robertson, Eddy
Rödenbeck, Christian
Séférian, Roland
Schwinger, Jörg
Smith, Naomi
Tans, Pieter P.
Tian, Hanqin
Tilbrook, Bronte
Tubiello, Francesco N.
van der Werf, Guido R.
Wiltshire, Andrew J.
Zaehle, Sönke
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2019-12-04T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
Alternate Identifier N/A
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
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Metadata Date 2023-08-18T19:09:01.179392
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:23028
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Friedlingstein, Pierre, Jones, Matthew W., O'Sullivan, Michael, Andrew, Robbie M., Hauck, Judith, Peters, Glen P., Peters, Wouter, Pongratz, Julia, Sitch, Stephen, Le Quéré, Corinne, Bakker, Dorothee C. E., Canadell, Josep G., Ciais, Philippe, Jackson, Robert B., Anthoni, Peter, Barbero, Leticia, Bastos, Ana, Bastrikov, Vladislav, Becker, Meike, Bopp, Laurent, Buitenhuis, Erik, Chandra, Naveen, Chevallier, Frédéric, Chini, Louise P., Currie, Kim I., Feely, Richard A., Gehlen, Marion, Gilfillan, Dennis, Gkritzalis, Thanos, Goll, Daniel S., Gruber, Nicolas, Gutekunst, Sören, Harris, Ian, Haverd, Vanessa, Houghton, Richard A., Hurtt, George, Ilyina, Tatiana, Jain, Atul K., Joetzjer, Emilie, Kaplan, Jed O., Kato, Etsushi, Klein Goldewijk, Kees, Korsbakken, Jan Ivar, Landschützer, Peter, Lauvset, Siv K., Lefèvre, Nathalie, Lenton, Andrew, Lienert, Sebastian, Lombardozzi, Danica, Marland, Gregg, McGuire, Patrick C., Melton, Joe R., Metzl, Nicolas, Munro, David R., Nabel, Julia E. M. S., Nakaoka, Shin-Ichiro, Neill, Craig, Omar, Abdirahman M., Ono, Tsuneo, Peregon, Anna, Pierrot, Denis, Poulter, Benjamin, Rehder, Gregor, Resplandy, Laure, Robertson, Eddy, Rödenbeck, Christian, Séférian, Roland, Schwinger, Jörg, Smith, Naomi, Tans, Pieter P., Tian, Hanqin, Tilbrook, Bronte, Tubiello, Francesco N., van der Werf, Guido R., Wiltshire, Andrew J., Zaehle, Sönke. (2019). Global Carbon Budget 2019. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7cf9t7h. Accessed 28 June 2025.

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