Articles | Volume 12, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-745-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-745-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Research article
| 
30 Jun 2021
Research article |
| 30 Jun 2021
| 30 Jun 2021
Comparison of uncertainties in land-use change fluxes from bookkeeping model parameterisation
Department of Geography, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany
Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Department of Biogeochemical Integration, 07745 Jena, Germany
Kerstin Hartung
Department of Geography, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany
now at: Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany
Tobias B. Nützel
Department of Geography, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany
Julia E. M. S. Nabel
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
Richard A. Houghton
Woodwell Climate Research Center, Falmouth, MA 02540, USA
Julia Pongratz
Department of Geography, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
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We created the LULUCF Data Hub to make information on how land use affects carbon dioxide emissions and removals more transparent and comparable among datasets. We show country-level data from national reports and global sources, allowing users to explore differences and similarities in land-based carbon fluxes. It helps identify where data agree, where they differ, and where more research is needed.
Fan Yang, Guanpeng Dong, Xiaoyu Meng, Richard A. Houghton, Yang Gao, Fanneng He, Meijiao Li, Wenjin Li, Bing Li, Zhihao Liu, Qinqin Mao, Pengfei Wu, Yuanzhi Yao, Xudong Zhai, Hongjuan Zhang, and Chao Yue
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 18, 875–902, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-875-2026, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-875-2026, 2026
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We used a millennial dataset of land-use change in China, combined with comprehensive soil and vegetation carbon density datasets, to quantify China’s annual carbon emissions resulting from land-use change between 1000 and 2019 using a bookkeeping model. The annual carbon emission flux provides a robust historical baseline for assessing terrestrial ecosystem carbon budgets at national and provincial scales, both in the present and future.
Na Li, Sebastian Sippel, Nora Linscheid, Miguel D. Mahecha, Markus Reichstein, and Ana Bastos
Biogeosciences, 23, 767–792, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-23-767-2026, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-23-767-2026, 2026
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We study when anthropogenic signal becomes detectable in the global land carbon sink, which has risen since the 1950s due to CO₂ fertilization and mid- to high-latitude warming. The signal emerges earlier at the global than at regional scales. Future scenarios (2016–2100) take longer to detect than the historical period (1851–2014) because the signal is weaker relative to larger natural variability. Removing circulation-induced variability with dynamical adjustment shortens the detection time.
Jean-Francois Lamarque, Pierre Friedlingstein, Brian Osias, Steve Strongin, Venkatramani Balaji, Kevin W. Bowman, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Heidi Cullen, Kenneth J. Davis, Scott C. Doney, Kevin R. Gurney, Alicia R. Karspeck, Charles D. Koven, Galen McKinley, Glen P. Peters, Julia Pongratz, Britt Stephens, and Colm Sweeney
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-6457, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-6457, 2026
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Earth System Dynamics (ESD).
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This Perspective highlights requirements to scale the carbon credit market and enable the growth in climate solutions funded through such market. The requirements are on the understanding of the value of the proposed carbon credit projects, and on the availability of a verification system. This verification becomes particularly relevant as the carbon credit market scales to significant impacts on CO2 (or other greenhouse gases), such that attribution to collective actions can be identified.
Tea Thum, Christine L. Goodale, Lin Yu, Julia Nabel, and Sönke Zaehle
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-5876, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-5876, 2025
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Nitrogen and carbon cycle have manifold interactions and to be able predict carbon sequestration of terrestrial vegetation, ability to model nitrogen cycle properly is important. 15N tracer experiments can be helpful, as they track the fate where added nitrogen will end up in the ecosystem. We simulated one such experiment with a model containing 15N cycle and found that comparison with data helped to evaluate the model in different aspects.
Daniele Peano, Deborah Hemming, Christine Delire, Yuanchao Fan, Hanna Lee, Stefano Materia, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Taejin Park, David Wårlind, Andy Wiltshire, and Sönke Zaehle
Biogeosciences, 22, 7117–7135, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-7117-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-7117-2025, 2025
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Earth System Models are the principal tools for scientists to study past, present, and future climate changes. This work investigates the ability of a set of them to represent the observed changes in vegetation, which are vital to estimating the impact of future climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. This study highlights the main limitations in correctly representing vegetation variability. These tools still need further development to improve our understanding of future changes.
Nikolina Mileva, Julia Pongratz, Vivek K. Arora, Akihiko Ito, Sebastiaan Luyssaert, Sonali S. McDermid, Paul A. Miller, Daniele Peano, Roland Séférian, Yanwu Zhang, and Wolfgang Buermann
Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 2137–2160, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-2137-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-2137-2025, 2025
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Despite forests being so important for mitigating climate change, there are still uncertainties about how much the changes in forest cover contribute to the cooling/warming of the climate. Climate models and real-world observations often disagree about the magnitude and even the direction of these changes. We constrain climate models scenarios of widespread deforestation with satellite and in-situ data and show that models still have difficulties representing the movement of heat and water.
Pierre Friedlingstein, Michael O'Sullivan, Matthew W. Jones, Robbie M. Andrew, Dorothee C. E. Bakker, Judith Hauck, Peter Landschützer, Corinne Le Quéré, Hongmei Li, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Glen P. Peters, Wouter Peters, Julia Pongratz, Clemens Schwingshackl, Stephen Sitch, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Kjetil Aas, Simone R. Alin, Peter Anthoni, Leticia Barbero, Nicholas R. Bates, Nicolas Bellouin, Alice Benoit-Cattin, Carla F. Berghoff, Raffaele Bernardello, Laurent Bopp, Ida B. M. Brasika, Matthew A. Chamberlain, Naveen Chandra, Frédéric Chevallier, Louise P. Chini, Nathan O. Collier, Thomas H. Colligan, Margot Cronin, Laique Djeutchouang, Xinyu Dou, Matt P. Enright, Kazutaka Enyo, Michael Erb, Wiley Evans, Richard A. Feely, Liang Feng, Daniel J. Ford, Adrianna Foster, Filippa Fransner, Thomas Gasser, Marion Gehlen, Thanos Gkritzalis, Jefferson Goncalves De Souza, Giacomo Grassi, Luke Gregor, Nicolas Gruber, Bertrand Guenet, Özgür Gürses, Kirsty Harrington, Ian Harris, Jens Heinke, George C. Hurtt, Yosuke Iida, Tatiana Ilyina, Akihiko Ito, Andrew R. Jacobson, Atul K. Jain, Tereza Jarníková, Annika Jersild, Fei Jiang, Steve D. Jones, Etsushi Kato, Ralph F. Keeling, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Jürgen Knauer, Yawen Kong, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Charles Koven, Taro Kunimitsu, Xin Lan, Junjie Liu, Zhiqiang Liu, Zhu Liu, Claire Lo Monaco, Lei Ma, Gregg Marland, Patrick C. McGuire, Galen A. McKinley, Joe Melton, Natalie Monacci, Erwan Monier, Eric J. Morgan, David R. Munro, Jens D. Müller, Shin-Ichiro Nakaoka, Lorna R. Nayagam, Yosuke Niwa, Tobias Nutzel, Are Olsen, Abdirahman M. Omar, Naiqing Pan, Sudhanshu Pandey, Denis Pierrot, Zhangcai Qin, Pierre A. G. Regnier, Gregor Rehder, Laure Resplandy, Alizée Roobaert, Thais M. Rosan, Christian Rödenbeck, Jörg Schwinger, Ingunn Skjelvan, T. Luke Smallman, Victoria Spada, Mohanan G. Sreeush, Qing Sun, Adrienne J. Sutton, Colm Sweeney, Didier Swingedouw, Roland Séférian, Shintaro Takao, Hiroaki Tatebe, Hanqin Tian, Xiangjun Tian, Bronte Tilbrook, Hiroyuki Tsujino, Francesco Tubiello, Erik van Ooijen, Guido van der Werf, Sebastiaan J. van de Velde, Anthony Walker, Rik Wanninkhof, Xiaojuan Yang, Wenping Yuan, Xu Yue, and Jiye Zeng
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-659, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-659, 2025
Preprint under review for ESSD
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The Global Carbon Budget 2025 describes the methodology, main results, and datasets used to quantify the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and their partitioning among the atmosphere, land ecosystems, and the ocean over the historical period (1750–2025). These living datasets are updated every year to provide the highest transparency and traceability in the reporting of CO2, the key driver of climate change.
Franziska Müller, Laura Eifler, Felix Cremer, Pieter Beck, Gustau Camps-Valls, and Ana Bastos
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4880, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4880, 2025
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Forest health is increasingly threatened, but disturbances like wind damage and insect outbreaks are hard to track. Our Sentinel-1 Disturbance Mapping (S1DM) approach combines satellite radar with survey data, improving detection for wind and bark beetle impacts and often spotting them earlier. Defoliators remain difficult to capture, but this method strengthens monitoring and supports better forest management.
Anna T. Schackow, Susan C. Steele-Dunne, David T. Milodowski, Jean-Marc Limousin, and Ana Bastos
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4884, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-4884, 2025
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Plants regulate how much water they lose and how much carbon they take in, but rising heat and dryness make this balance harder. We studied how water movement inside plant stems changes during the day and relates to dryness in the air and soil. By analyzing these daily patterns, we identified signals of stress that could be tracked not only with sensors in plants but also from satellites, offering new ways to monitor global vegetation health.
Friedrich J. Bohn, Giles B. Sioen, Ana Bastos, Yolandi Ernst, Marcin P. Jarzebski, Niak S. Koh, Romina Martin, Anja Rammig, Alex Godoy-Faúndez, Alexandros Gasparatos, Alvaro G. Gutiérrez, Amanda J. Aceituno, Andra-Ioana Horcea-Milcu, Andrea Marais-Potgieter, Ayyoob Sharifi, Caroline Howe, Cornelia B. Krug, Eduardo E. Acosta, Emmanuel F. Nzunda, Erik Andersson, Hans-Otto Pörtner, Helen Sooväli-Sepping, Ishihara Hiroe, Ivan Palmegiani, Kaera Coetzer, Kirsten Thonike, Krizler Tanalgo, Lisa Biber-Freudenberger, Nicholas O. Oguge, Mi S. Park, Milena Gross, Pablo De La Cruz, Paula R. Prist, Peng Bi, Rivera Diego, Roman Isaac, Rosemary McFarlane, Sinikka J. Paulus, Stefanie Burkhart, Sung-Ching Lee, Susanne Müller, Uchi D. Terhile, Wan-Yu Shih, William K. Smith, Viola Hakkarainen, Virginia Murray, Yuki Yoshida, Yohannes T. Damtew, and Zeenat Niazi
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3619, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3619, 2025
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The aim of this series is to provide decision-makers with valuable insights into the current state of biosphere research. Firstly, it is intended to ensure the flow of information between the comprehensive assessment reports of the IPCC and IPBES. On the other hand, it is intended to support economic and political decisions closely related to the biosphere with scientifically sound findings – including uncertainties – and comprehensive polysolutions, helping to solve the earth system polycrisis.
Olivier Bouriaud, Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Konstantin Gregor, Issam Boukhris, Peter Högberg, Roland Irslinger, Phillip Papastefanou, Julia Pongratz, Anja Rammig, Riccardo Valentini, and Christian Körner
Biogeosciences, 22, 4729–4741, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-4729-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-4729-2025, 2025
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The impact of harvesting on forests' carbon sink capacities is debated. One view is that their sink strength is resilient to harvesting, and the other is that it disrupts these capacities. Our work shows that leaf area index (LAI) has been overlooked in this discussion. We found that temperate forests' carbon uptake is largely insensitive to variations in LAI beyond 4.5 m² m-² but that forests operate at higher levels.
Zhixuan Guo, Wei Li, Philippe Ciais, Stephen Sitch, Guido R. van der Werf, Simon P. K. Bowring, Ana Bastos, Florent Mouillot, Jiaying He, Minxuan Sun, Lei Zhu, Xiaomeng Du, Nan Wang, and Xiaomeng Huang
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 3599–3618, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-3599-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-3599-2025, 2025
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To address the limitations of short time spans in satellite data and spatiotemporal discontinuity in site records, we reconstructed global monthly burned area maps at a 0.5° resolution for 1901–2020 using machine learning models. The global burned area is predicted at 3.46 × 106–4.58 × 106 km² per year, showing a decline from 1901 to 1978, an increase from 1978 to 2008 and a sharper decrease from 2008 to 2020. This dataset provides a benchmark for studies on fire ecology and the carbon cycle.
Ida Bagus Mandhara Brasika, Pierre Friedlingstein, Stephen Sitch, Michael O'Sullivan, Maria Carolina Duran-Rojas, Thais Michele Rosan, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Julia Pongratz, Clemens Schwingshackl, Louise P. Chini, and George C. Hurtt
Biogeosciences, 22, 3547–3561, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-3547-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-3547-2025, 2025
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Indonesia is the world's third-highest carbon emitter from land use change. However, there are uncertainties in the carbon emissions of Indonesia. Our best estimate of carbon emissions from land use change in Indonesia is 0.12 ± 0.02 PgC/yr with a steady trend. Despite many uncertainties created by drivers, models, and products, we also found robust agreements between these models and products. All agree that Indonesian carbon emissions from LULCC (land use and land cover change) have had no decreasing trend for the last 2 decades.
Theertha Kariyathan, Ana Bastos, Markus Reichstein, Wouter Peters, and Julia Marshall
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 7863–7878, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7863-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-7863-2025, 2025
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The carbon uptake period (CUP) is the time period when land absorbs more CO2 than it emits. While atmospheric CO2 mole fraction measurements can be used to assess CUP changes, atmospheric transport and asynchronous timing across regions reduce the accuracy of the estimates. Forward model experiments show that only ~ 50 % of prescribed shifts in CUP timing applied to surface fluxes (ΔCUPNEE) are captured in simulated CO2 mole fraction data at monitoring sites like the Barrow Atmospheric Baseline Observatory.
Guohua Liu, Philippe Ciais, Shengli Tao, Hui Yang, and Ana Bastos
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-330, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-330, 2025
Manuscript not accepted for further review
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We have developed a long-term and high-resolution global map of above-ground biomass changes from 1993 to 2020 using radar data and machine learning approach. This dataset can help understand the effects of disturbances, land-use changes, and extreme events on global carbon cycle, and enhance the representation of these processes in Earth System Models.
Mara Y. McPartland, Tomas Lovato, Charles D. Koven, Jamie D. Wilson, Briony Turner, Colleen M. Petrik, José Licón-Saláiz, Fang Li, Fanny Lhardy, Jaclyn Clement Kinney, Michio Kawamiya, Birgit Hassler, Nathan P. Gillett, Cheikh Modou Noreyni Fall, Christopher Danek, Chris M. Brierley, Ana Bastos, and Oliver Andrews
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3246, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3246, 2025
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The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) is an international consortium of climate modeling groups that produce coordinated experiments in order to evaluate human influence on the climate and test knowledge of Earth systems. This paper describes the data requested for Earth systems research in CMIP7. We detail the request for model output of the carbon cycle, the flows of energy among the atmosphere, land and the oceans, and interactions between these and the global climate.
Piers M. Forster, Chris Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Christophe Cassou, Mathias Hauser, Zeke Hausfather, June-Yi Lee, Matthew D. Palmer, Karina von Schuckmann, Aimée B. A. Slangen, Sophie Szopa, Blair Trewin, Jeongeun Yun, Nathan P. Gillett, Stuart Jenkins, H. Damon Matthews, Krishnan Raghavan, Aurélien Ribes, Joeri Rogelj, Debbie Rosen, Xuebin Zhang, Myles Allen, Lara Aleluia Reis, Robbie M. Andrew, Richard A. Betts, Alex Borger, Jiddu A. Broersma, Samantha N. Burgess, Lijing Cheng, Pierre Friedlingstein, Catia M. Domingues, Marco Gambarini, Thomas Gasser, Johannes Gütschow, Masayoshi Ishii, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel E. Killick, Paul B. Krummel, Aurélien Liné, Didier P. Monselesan, Colin Morice, Jens Mühle, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Jan C. Minx, Matthew Rigby, Robert Rohde, Abhishek Savita, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Peter Thorne, Christopher Wells, Luke M. Western, Guido R. van der Werf, Susan E. Wijffels, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 2641–2680, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2641-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-2641-2025, 2025
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In a rapidly changing climate, evidence-based decision-making benefits from up-to-date and timely information. Here we compile monitoring datasets to track real-world changes over time. To make our work relevant to policymakers, we follow methods from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Human activities are increasing the Earth's energy imbalance and driving faster sea-level rise compared to the IPCC assessment.
Amali A. Amali, Clemens Schwingshackl, Akihiko Ito, Alina Barbu, Christine Delire, Daniele Peano, David M. Lawrence, David Wårlind, Eddy Robertson, Edouard L. Davin, Elena Shevliakova, Ian N. Harman, Nicolas Vuichard, Paul A. Miller, Peter J. Lawrence, Tilo Ziehn, Tomohiro Hajima, Victor Brovkin, Yanwu Zhang, Vivek K. Arora, and Julia Pongratz
Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 803–840, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-803-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-803-2025, 2025
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Our study explored the impact of anthropogenic land-use change (LUC) on climate dynamics, focusing on biogeophysical (BGP) and biogeochemical (BGC) effects using data from the Land Use Model Intercomparison Project (LUMIP) and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6). We found that LUC-induced carbon emissions contribute to a BGC warming of 0.21 °C, with BGC effects dominating globally over BGP effects, which show regional variability. Our findings highlight discrepancies in model simulations and emphasize the need for improved representations of LUC processes.
Friedrich J. Bohn, Ana Bastos, Romina Martin, Anja Rammig, Niak Sian Koh, Giles B. Sioen, Bram Buscher, Louise Carver, Fabrice DeClerck, Moritz Drupp, Robert Fletcher, Matthew Forrest, Alexandros Gasparatos, Alex Godoy-Faúndez, Gregor Hagedorn, Martin C. Hänsel, Jessica Hetzer, Thomas Hickler, Cornelia B. Krug, Stasja Koot, Xiuzhen Li, Amy Luers, Shelby Matevich, H. Damon Matthews, Ina C. Meier, Mirco Migliavacca, Awaz Mohamed, Sungmin O, David Obura, Ben Orlove, Rene Orth, Laura Pereira, Markus Reichstein, Lerato Thakholi, Peter H. Verburg, and Yuki Yoshida
Biogeosciences, 22, 2425–2460, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-2425-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-2425-2025, 2025
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An interdisciplinary collaboration of 36 international researchers from 35 institutions highlights recent findings in biosphere research. Within eight themes, they discuss issues arising from climate change and other anthropogenic stressors and highlight the co-benefits of nature-based solutions and ecosystem services. Based on an analysis of these eight topics, we have synthesized four overarching insights.
Suqi Guo, Felix Havermann, Steven J. De Hertog, Fei Luo, Iris Manola, Thomas Raddatz, Hongmei Li, Wim Thiery, Quentin Lejeune, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, David Wårlind, Lars Nieradzik, and Julia Pongratz
Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 631–666, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-631-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-631-2025, 2025
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Land cover and land management changes (LCLMCs) can alter climate even in intact areas, causing carbon changes in remote areas. This study is the first to assess these effects, finding they substantially alter global carbon dynamics, changing terrestrial stocks by up to dozens of gigatonnes. These results are vital for scientific and policy assessments, given the expected role of LCLMCs in achieving the Paris Agreement's goal to limit global warming below 1.5 °C.
William Lamb, Robbie Andrew, Matthew Jones, Zebedee Nicholls, Glen Peters, Chris Smith, Marielle Saunois, Giacomo Grassi, Julia Pongratz, Steven Smith, Francesco Tubiello, Monica Crippa, Matthew Gidden, Pierre Friedlingstein, Jan Minx, and Piers Forster
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-188, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2025-188, 2025
Revised manuscript under review for ESSD
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This study explores why global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions estimates vary. Key reasons include different coverage of gases and sectors, varying definitions of anthropogenic land use change emissions, and the Paris Agreement not covering all emission sources. The study highlights three main ways emissions data is reported, each with different objectives and resulting in varying global emission totals. It emphasizes the need for transparency in choosing datasets and setting assessment scopes.
Zhu Deng, Philippe Ciais, Liting Hu, Adrien Martinez, Marielle Saunois, Rona L. Thompson, Kushal Tibrewal, Wouter Peters, Brendan Byrne, Giacomo Grassi, Paul I. Palmer, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Zhu Liu, Junjie Liu, Xuekun Fang, Tengjiao Wang, Hanqin Tian, Katsumasa Tanaka, Ana Bastos, Stephen Sitch, Benjamin Poulter, Clément Albergel, Aki Tsuruta, Shamil Maksyutov, Rajesh Janardanan, Yosuke Niwa, Bo Zheng, Joël Thanwerdas, Dmitry Belikov, Arjo Segers, and Frédéric Chevallier
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 1121–1152, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1121-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1121-2025, 2025
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This study reconciles national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories with updated atmospheric inversion results to evaluate discrepancies for three principal GHG fluxes at the national level. Compared to our previous study, new satellite-based CO2 inversions were included and an updated mask of managed lands was used, improving agreement for Brazil and Canada. The proposed methodology can be regularly applied as a check to assess the gap between top-down inversions and bottom-up inventories.
Pierre Friedlingstein, Michael O'Sullivan, Matthew W. Jones, Robbie M. Andrew, Judith Hauck, Peter Landschützer, Corinne Le Quéré, Hongmei Li, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Are Olsen, Glen P. Peters, Wouter Peters, Julia Pongratz, Clemens Schwingshackl, Stephen Sitch, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Robert B. Jackson, Simone R. Alin, Almut Arneth, Vivek Arora, Nicholas R. Bates, Meike Becker, Nicolas Bellouin, Carla F. Berghoff, Henry C. Bittig, Laurent Bopp, Patricia Cadule, Katie Campbell, Matthew A. Chamberlain, Naveen Chandra, Frédéric Chevallier, Louise P. Chini, Thomas Colligan, Jeanne Decayeux, Laique M. Djeutchouang, Xinyu Dou, Carolina Duran Rojas, Kazutaka Enyo, Wiley Evans, Amanda R. Fay, Richard A. Feely, Daniel J. Ford, Adrianna Foster, Thomas Gasser, Marion Gehlen, Thanos Gkritzalis, Giacomo Grassi, Luke Gregor, Nicolas Gruber, Özgür Gürses, Ian Harris, Matthew Hefner, Jens Heinke, George C. Hurtt, Yosuke Iida, Tatiana Ilyina, Andrew R. Jacobson, Atul K. Jain, Tereza Jarníková, Annika Jersild, Fei Jiang, Zhe Jin, Etsushi Kato, Ralph F. Keeling, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Jürgen Knauer, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Xin Lan, Siv K. Lauvset, Nathalie Lefèvre, Zhu Liu, Junjie Liu, Lei Ma, Shamil Maksyutov, Gregg Marland, Nicolas Mayot, Patrick C. McGuire, Nicolas Metzl, Natalie M. Monacci, Eric J. Morgan, Shin-Ichiro Nakaoka, Craig Neill, Yosuke Niwa, Tobias Nützel, Lea Olivier, Tsuneo Ono, Paul I. Palmer, Denis Pierrot, Zhangcai Qin, Laure Resplandy, Alizée Roobaert, Thais M. Rosan, Christian Rödenbeck, Jörg Schwinger, T. Luke Smallman, Stephen M. Smith, Reinel Sospedra-Alfonso, Tobias Steinhoff, Qing Sun, Adrienne J. Sutton, Roland Séférian, Shintaro Takao, Hiroaki Tatebe, Hanqin Tian, Bronte Tilbrook, Olivier Torres, Etienne Tourigny, Hiroyuki Tsujino, Francesco Tubiello, Guido van der Werf, Rik Wanninkhof, Xuhui Wang, Dongxu Yang, Xiaojuan Yang, Zhen Yu, Wenping Yuan, Xu Yue, Sönke Zaehle, Ning Zeng, and Jiye Zeng
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 17, 965–1039, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-965-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-965-2025, 2025
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The Global Carbon Budget 2024 describes the methodology, main results, and datasets used to quantify the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and their partitioning among the atmosphere, land ecosystems, and the ocean over the historical period (1750–2024). These living datasets are updated every year to provide the highest transparency and traceability in the reporting of CO2, the key driver of climate change.
Kerstin Hartung, Bastian Kern, Nils-Arne Dreier, Jörn Geisbüsch, Mahnoosh Haghighatnasab, Patrick Jöckel, Astrid Kerkweg, Wilton Jaciel Loch, Florian Prill, and Daniel Rieger
Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 1001–1015, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1001-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-1001-2025, 2025
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The ICOsahedral Non-hydrostatic (ICON) model system Community Interface (ComIn) library supports connecting third-party modules to the ICON model. Third-party modules can range from simple diagnostic Python scripts to full chemistry models. ComIn offers a low barrier for code extensions to ICON, provides multi-language support (Fortran, C/C++, and Python), and reduces the migration effort in response to new ICON releases. This paper presents the ComIn design principles and a range of use cases.
István Dunkl, Ana Bastos, and Tatiana Ilyina
Earth Syst. Dynam., 16, 151–167, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-151-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-16-151-2025, 2025
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While the El Niño–Southern Oscillation, a climate mode, has a similar impact on CO2 growth rates across Earth system models, there is significant uncertainty in the processes behind this relationship. We found a compensatory effect that masks differences in the sensitivity of carbon fluxes to climate anomalies and observed that the carbon fluxes contributing to global CO2 anomalies originate from different regions and are caused by different drivers.
Sabine Egerer, Stefanie Falk, Dorothea Mayer, Tobias Nützel, Wolfgang A. Obermeier, and Julia Pongratz
Biogeosciences, 21, 5005–5025, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-5005-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-5005-2024, 2024
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Using a state-of-the-art land model, we find that bioenergy plants can store carbon more efficiently than forests over long periods in the soil, in geological reservoirs, or by substituting fossil-fuel-based energy. Planting forests is more suitable for reaching climate targets by 2050. The carbon removal potential depends also on local environmental conditions. These considerations have important implications for climate policy, spatial planning, nature conservation, and agriculture.
Anne F. Van Loon, Sarra Kchouk, Alessia Matanó, Faranak Tootoonchi, Camila Alvarez-Garreton, Khalid E. A. Hassaballah, Minchao Wu, Marthe L. K. Wens, Anastasiya Shyrokaya, Elena Ridolfi, Riccardo Biella, Viorica Nagavciuc, Marlies H. Barendrecht, Ana Bastos, Louise Cavalcante, Franciska T. de Vries, Margaret Garcia, Johanna Mård, Ileen N. Streefkerk, Claudia Teutschbein, Roshanak Tootoonchi, Ruben Weesie, Valentin Aich, Juan P. Boisier, Giuliano Di Baldassarre, Yiheng Du, Mauricio Galleguillos, René Garreaud, Monica Ionita, Sina Khatami, Johanna K. L. Koehler, Charles H. Luce, Shreedhar Maskey, Heidi D. Mendoza, Moses N. Mwangi, Ilias G. Pechlivanidis, Germano G. Ribeiro Neto, Tirthankar Roy, Robert Stefanski, Patricia Trambauer, Elizabeth A. Koebele, Giulia Vico, and Micha Werner
Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 24, 3173–3205, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-3173-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-3173-2024, 2024
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Drought is a creeping phenomenon but is often still analysed and managed like an isolated event, without taking into account what happened before and after. Here, we review the literature and analyse five cases to discuss how droughts and their impacts develop over time. We find that the responses of hydrological, ecological, and social systems can be classified into four types and that the systems interact. We provide suggestions for further research and monitoring, modelling, and management.
Piers M. Forster, Chris Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Bradley Hall, Mathias Hauser, Aurélien Ribes, Debbie Rosen, Nathan P. Gillett, Matthew D. Palmer, Joeri Rogelj, Karina von Schuckmann, Blair Trewin, Myles Allen, Robbie Andrew, Richard A. Betts, Alex Borger, Tim Boyer, Jiddu A. Broersma, Carlo Buontempo, Samantha Burgess, Chiara Cagnazzo, Lijing Cheng, Pierre Friedlingstein, Andrew Gettelman, Johannes Gütschow, Masayoshi Ishii, Stuart Jenkins, Xin Lan, Colin Morice, Jens Mühle, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel E. Killick, Paul B. Krummel, Jan C. Minx, Gunnar Myhre, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Sophie Szopa, Peter Thorne, Mahesh V. M. Kovilakam, Elisa Majamäki, Jukka-Pekka Jalkanen, Margreet van Marle, Rachel M. Hoesly, Robert Rohde, Dominik Schumacher, Guido van der Werf, Russell Vose, Kirsten Zickfeld, Xuebin Zhang, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 2625–2658, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2625-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-2625-2024, 2024
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This paper tracks some key indicators of global warming through time, from 1850 through to the end of 2023. It is designed to give an authoritative estimate of global warming to date and its causes. We find that in 2023, global warming reached 1.3 °C and is increasing at over 0.2 °C per decade. This is caused by all-time-high greenhouse gas emissions.
Guilherme L. Torres Mendonça, Julia Pongratz, and Christian H. Reick
Biogeosciences, 21, 1923–1960, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-1923-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-21-1923-2024, 2024
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We study the timescale dependence of airborne fraction and underlying feedbacks by a theory of the climate–carbon system. Using simulations we show the predictive power of this theory and find that (1) this fraction generally decreases for increasing timescales and (2) at all timescales the total feedback is negative and the model spread in a single feedback causes the spread in the airborne fraction. Our study indicates that those are properties of the system, independently of the scenario.
Steven J. De Hertog, Carmen E. Lopez-Fabara, Ruud van der Ent, Jessica Keune, Diego G. Miralles, Raphael Portmann, Sebastian Schemm, Felix Havermann, Suqi Guo, Fei Luo, Iris Manola, Quentin Lejeune, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Wim Thiery
Earth Syst. Dynam., 15, 265–291, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-265-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-15-265-2024, 2024
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Changes in land use are crucial to achieve lower global warming. However, despite their importance, the effects of these changes on moisture fluxes are poorly understood. We analyse land cover and management scenarios in three climate models involving cropland expansion, afforestation, and irrigation. Results show largely consistent influences on moisture fluxes, with cropland expansion causing a drying and reduced local moisture recycling, while afforestation and irrigation show the opposite.
Samuel Upton, Markus Reichstein, Fabian Gans, Wouter Peters, Basil Kraft, and Ana Bastos
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 2555–2582, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-2555-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-2555-2024, 2024
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Data-driven eddy-covariance upscaled estimates of the global land–atmosphere net CO2 exchange (NEE) show important mismatches with regional and global estimates based on atmospheric information. To address this, we create a model with a dual constraint based on bottom-up eddy-covariance data and top-down atmospheric inversion data. Our model overcomes shortcomings of each approach, producing improved NEE estimates from local to global scale, helping to reduce uncertainty in the carbon budget.
Wolfgang Alexander Obermeier, Clemens Schwingshackl, Ana Bastos, Giulia Conchedda, Thomas Gasser, Giacomo Grassi, Richard A. Houghton, Francesco Nicola Tubiello, Stephen Sitch, and Julia Pongratz
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 605–645, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-605-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-605-2024, 2024
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We provide and compare country-level estimates of land-use CO2 fluxes from a variety and large number of models, bottom-up estimates, and country reports for the period 1950–2021. Although net fluxes are small in many countries, they are often composed of large compensating emissions and removals. In many countries, the estimates agree well once their individual characteristics are accounted for, but in other countries, including some of the largest emitters, substantial uncertainties exist.
Jan De Pue, Sebastian Wieneke, Ana Bastos, José Miguel Barrios, Liyang Liu, Philippe Ciais, Alirio Arboleda, Rafiq Hamdi, Maral Maleki, Fabienne Maignan, Françoise Gellens-Meulenberghs, Ivan Janssens, and Manuela Balzarolo
Biogeosciences, 20, 4795–4818, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-4795-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-4795-2023, 2023
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The gross primary production (GPP) of the terrestrial biosphere is a key source of variability in the global carbon cycle. To estimate this flux, models can rely on remote sensing data (RS-driven), meteorological data (meteo-driven) or a combination of both (hybrid). An intercomparison of 11 models demonstrated that RS-driven models lack the sensitivity to short-term anomalies. Conversely, the simulation of soil moisture dynamics and stress response remains a challenge in meteo-driven models.
Pierre Friedlingstein, Michael O'Sullivan, Matthew W. Jones, Robbie M. Andrew, Dorothee C. E. Bakker, Judith Hauck, Peter Landschützer, Corinne Le Quéré, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Glen P. Peters, Wouter Peters, Julia Pongratz, Clemens Schwingshackl, Stephen Sitch, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Robert B. Jackson, Simone R. Alin, Peter Anthoni, Leticia Barbero, Nicholas R. Bates, Meike Becker, Nicolas Bellouin, Bertrand Decharme, Laurent Bopp, Ida Bagus Mandhara Brasika, Patricia Cadule, Matthew A. Chamberlain, Naveen Chandra, Thi-Tuyet-Trang Chau, Frédéric Chevallier, Louise P. Chini, Margot Cronin, Xinyu Dou, Kazutaka Enyo, Wiley Evans, Stefanie Falk, Richard A. Feely, Liang Feng, Daniel J. Ford, Thomas Gasser, Josefine Ghattas, Thanos Gkritzalis, Giacomo Grassi, Luke Gregor, Nicolas Gruber, Özgür Gürses, Ian Harris, Matthew Hefner, Jens Heinke, Richard A. Houghton, George C. Hurtt, Yosuke Iida, Tatiana Ilyina, Andrew R. Jacobson, Atul Jain, Tereza Jarníková, Annika Jersild, Fei Jiang, Zhe Jin, Fortunat Joos, Etsushi Kato, Ralph F. Keeling, Daniel Kennedy, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Jürgen Knauer, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Arne Körtzinger, Xin Lan, Nathalie Lefèvre, Hongmei Li, Junjie Liu, Zhiqiang Liu, Lei Ma, Greg Marland, Nicolas Mayot, Patrick C. McGuire, Galen A. McKinley, Gesa Meyer, Eric J. Morgan, David R. Munro, Shin-Ichiro Nakaoka, Yosuke Niwa, Kevin M. O'Brien, Are Olsen, Abdirahman M. Omar, Tsuneo Ono, Melf Paulsen, Denis Pierrot, Katie Pocock, Benjamin Poulter, Carter M. Powis, Gregor Rehder, Laure Resplandy, Eddy Robertson, Christian Rödenbeck, Thais M. Rosan, Jörg Schwinger, Roland Séférian, T. Luke Smallman, Stephen M. Smith, Reinel Sospedra-Alfonso, Qing Sun, Adrienne J. Sutton, Colm Sweeney, Shintaro Takao, Pieter P. Tans, Hanqin Tian, Bronte Tilbrook, Hiroyuki Tsujino, Francesco Tubiello, Guido R. van der Werf, Erik van Ooijen, Rik Wanninkhof, Michio Watanabe, Cathy Wimart-Rousseau, Dongxu Yang, Xiaojuan Yang, Wenping Yuan, Xu Yue, Sönke Zaehle, Jiye Zeng, and Bo Zheng
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 5301–5369, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5301-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-5301-2023, 2023
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The Global Carbon Budget 2023 describes the methodology, main results, and data sets used to quantify the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and their partitioning among the atmosphere, land ecosystems, and the ocean over the historical period (1750–2023). These living datasets are updated every year to provide the highest transparency and traceability in the reporting of CO2, the key driver of climate change.
Chenwei Xiao, Sönke Zaehle, Hui Yang, Jean-Pierre Wigneron, Christiane Schmullius, and Ana Bastos
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 1211–1237, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-1211-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-1211-2023, 2023
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Ecosystem resistance reflects their susceptibility during adverse conditions and can be changed by land management. We estimate ecosystem resistance to drought and temperature globally. We find a higher resistance to drought in forests compared to croplands and an evident loss of resistance to drought when primary forests are converted to secondary forests or they are harvested. Old-growth trees tend to be more resistant in some forests and crops benefit from irrigation during drought periods.
Matthew J. McGrath, Ana Maria Roxana Petrescu, Philippe Peylin, Robbie M. Andrew, Bradley Matthews, Frank Dentener, Juraj Balkovič, Vladislav Bastrikov, Meike Becker, Gregoire Broquet, Philippe Ciais, Audrey Fortems-Cheiney, Raphael Ganzenmüller, Giacomo Grassi, Ian Harris, Matthew Jones, Jürgen Knauer, Matthias Kuhnert, Guillaume Monteil, Saqr Munassar, Paul I. Palmer, Glen P. Peters, Chunjing Qiu, Mart-Jan Schelhaas, Oksana Tarasova, Matteo Vizzarri, Karina Winkler, Gianpaolo Balsamo, Antoine Berchet, Peter Briggs, Patrick Brockmann, Frédéric Chevallier, Giulia Conchedda, Monica Crippa, Stijn N. C. Dellaert, Hugo A. C. Denier van der Gon, Sara Filipek, Pierre Friedlingstein, Richard Fuchs, Michael Gauss, Christoph Gerbig, Diego Guizzardi, Dirk Günther, Richard A. Houghton, Greet Janssens-Maenhout, Ronny Lauerwald, Bas Lerink, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Géraud Moulas, Marilena Muntean, Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Aurélie Paquirissamy, Lucia Perugini, Wouter Peters, Roberto Pilli, Julia Pongratz, Pierre Regnier, Marko Scholze, Yusuf Serengil, Pete Smith, Efisio Solazzo, Rona L. Thompson, Francesco N. Tubiello, Timo Vesala, and Sophia Walther
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 4295–4370, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-4295-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-4295-2023, 2023
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Accurate estimation of fluxes of carbon dioxide from the land surface is essential for understanding future impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate system. A wide variety of methods currently exist to estimate these sources and sinks. We are continuing work to develop annual comparisons of these diverse methods in order to clarify what they all actually calculate and to resolve apparent disagreement, in addition to highlighting opportunities for increased understanding.
Theertha Kariyathan, Ana Bastos, Julia Marshall, Wouter Peters, Pieter Tans, and Markus Reichstein
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 16, 3299–3312, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3299-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-3299-2023, 2023
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The timing and duration of the carbon uptake period (CUP) are sensitive to the occurrence of major phenological events, which are influenced by recent climate change. This study presents an ensemble-based approach for quantifying the timing and duration of the CUP and their uncertainty when derived from atmospheric CO2 measurements with noise and gaps. The CUP metrics derived with the approach are more robust and have less uncertainty than when estimated with the conventional methods.
Piers M. Forster, Christopher J. Smith, Tristram Walsh, William F. Lamb, Robin Lamboll, Mathias Hauser, Aurélien Ribes, Debbie Rosen, Nathan Gillett, Matthew D. Palmer, Joeri Rogelj, Karina von Schuckmann, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Blair Trewin, Xuebin Zhang, Myles Allen, Robbie Andrew, Arlene Birt, Alex Borger, Tim Boyer, Jiddu A. Broersma, Lijing Cheng, Frank Dentener, Pierre Friedlingstein, José M. Gutiérrez, Johannes Gütschow, Bradley Hall, Masayoshi Ishii, Stuart Jenkins, Xin Lan, June-Yi Lee, Colin Morice, Christopher Kadow, John Kennedy, Rachel Killick, Jan C. Minx, Vaishali Naik, Glen P. Peters, Anna Pirani, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sophie Szopa, Peter Thorne, Robert Rohde, Maisa Rojas Corradi, Dominik Schumacher, Russell Vose, Kirsten Zickfeld, Valérie Masson-Delmotte, and Panmao Zhai
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 2295–2327, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2295-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2295-2023, 2023
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This is a critical decade for climate action, but there is no annual tracking of the level of human-induced warming. We build on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports that are authoritative but published infrequently to create a set of key global climate indicators that can be tracked through time. Our hope is that this becomes an important annual publication that policymakers, media, scientists and the public can refer to.
Steven J. De Hertog, Felix Havermann, Inne Vanderkelen, Suqi Guo, Fei Luo, Iris Manola, Dim Coumou, Edouard L. Davin, Gregory Duveiller, Quentin Lejeune, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Wim Thiery
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 629–667, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-629-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-629-2023, 2023
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Land cover and land management changes are important strategies for future land-based mitigation. We investigate the climate effects of cropland expansion, afforestation, irrigation and wood harvesting using three Earth system models. Results show that these have important implications for surface temperature where the land cover and/or management change occur and in remote areas. Idealized afforestation causes global warming, which might offset the cooling effect from enhanced carbon uptake.
Richard A. Houghton and Andrea Castanho
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 2025–2054, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2025-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-2025-2023, 2023
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We update a previous analysis of carbon emissions (annual and national) from land use, land-use change, and forestry from 1850 to 2020. We use data from the latest (2020) Global Forest Resources Assessment, incorporate shifting cultivation, and include improvements to the bookkeeping model and recent estimates of emissions from peatlands. Net global emissions declined steadily over the decade from 2011 to 2020 (mean of 0.96 Pg C yr−1), falling below 1.0 Pg C yr−1 for the first time in 30 years.
Steven J. De Hertog, Carmen E. Lopez-Fabara, Ruud van der Ent, Jessica Keune, Diego G. Miralles, Raphael Portmann, Sebastian Schemm, Felix Havermann, Suqi Guo, Fei Luo, Iris Manola, Quentin Lejeune, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Wim Thiery
EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-953, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-953, 2023
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Land cover and management changes can affect the climate and water availability. In this study we use climate model simulations of extreme global land cover changes (afforestation, deforestation) and land management changes (irrigation) to understand the effects on the global water cycle and local to continental water availability. We show that cropland expansion generally leads to higher evaporation and lower amounts of precipitation and afforestation and irrigation expansion to the opposite.
Giacomo Grassi, Clemens Schwingshackl, Thomas Gasser, Richard A. Houghton, Stephen Sitch, Josep G. Canadell, Alessandro Cescatti, Philippe Ciais, Sandro Federici, Pierre Friedlingstein, Werner A. Kurz, Maria J. Sanz Sanchez, Raúl Abad Viñas, Ramdane Alkama, Selma Bultan, Guido Ceccherini, Stefanie Falk, Etsushi Kato, Daniel Kennedy, Jürgen Knauer, Anu Korosuo, Joana Melo, Matthew J. McGrath, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Benjamin Poulter, Anna A. Romanovskaya, Simone Rossi, Hanqin Tian, Anthony P. Walker, Wenping Yuan, Xu Yue, and Julia Pongratz
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 1093–1114, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-1093-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-1093-2023, 2023
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Striking differences exist in estimates of land-use CO2 fluxes between the national greenhouse gas inventories and the IPCC assessment reports. These differences hamper an accurate assessment of the collective progress under the Paris Agreement. By implementing an approach that conceptually reconciles land-use CO2 flux from national inventories and the global models used by the IPCC, our study is an important step forward for increasing confidence in land-use CO2 flux estimates.
Hongmei Li, Tatiana Ilyina, Tammas Loughran, Aaron Spring, and Julia Pongratz
Earth Syst. Dynam., 14, 101–119, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-101-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-14-101-2023, 2023
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For the first time, our decadal prediction system based on Max Planck Institute Earth System Model enables prognostic atmospheric CO2 with an interactive carbon cycle. The evolution of CO2 fluxes and atmospheric CO2 growth is reconstructed well by assimilating data products; retrospective predictions show high confidence in predicting changes in the next year. The Earth system predictions provide valuable inputs for understanding the global carbon cycle and informing climate-relevant policy.
Rainer Schneck, Veronika Gayler, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Thomas Raddatz, Christian H. Reick, and Reiner Schnur
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 8581–8611, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-8581-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-8581-2022, 2022
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The versions of ICON-A and ICON-Land/JSBACHv4 used for this study constitute the first milestone in the development of the new ICON Earth System Model ICON-ESM. JSBACHv4 is the successor of JSBACHv3, and most of the parameterizations of JSBACHv4 are re-implementations from JSBACHv3. We assess and compare the performance of JSBACHv4 and JSBACHv3. Overall, the JSBACHv4 results are as good as JSBACHv3, but both models reveal the same main shortcomings, e.g. the depiction of the leaf area index.
Pierre Friedlingstein, Michael O'Sullivan, Matthew W. Jones, Robbie M. Andrew, Luke Gregor, Judith Hauck, Corinne Le Quéré, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Are Olsen, Glen P. Peters, Wouter Peters, Julia Pongratz, Clemens Schwingshackl, Stephen Sitch, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Robert B. Jackson, Simone R. Alin, Ramdane Alkama, Almut Arneth, Vivek K. Arora, Nicholas R. Bates, Meike Becker, Nicolas Bellouin, Henry C. Bittig, Laurent Bopp, Frédéric Chevallier, Louise P. Chini, Margot Cronin, Wiley Evans, Stefanie Falk, Richard A. Feely, Thomas Gasser, Marion Gehlen, Thanos Gkritzalis, Lucas Gloege, Giacomo Grassi, Nicolas Gruber, Özgür Gürses, Ian Harris, Matthew Hefner, Richard A. Houghton, George C. Hurtt, Yosuke Iida, Tatiana Ilyina, Atul K. Jain, Annika Jersild, Koji Kadono, Etsushi Kato, Daniel Kennedy, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Jürgen Knauer, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Peter Landschützer, Nathalie Lefèvre, Keith Lindsay, Junjie Liu, Zhu Liu, Gregg Marland, Nicolas Mayot, Matthew J. McGrath, Nicolas Metzl, Natalie M. Monacci, David R. Munro, Shin-Ichiro Nakaoka, Yosuke Niwa, Kevin O'Brien, Tsuneo Ono, Paul I. Palmer, Naiqing Pan, Denis Pierrot, Katie Pocock, Benjamin Poulter, Laure Resplandy, Eddy Robertson, Christian Rödenbeck, Carmen Rodriguez, Thais M. Rosan, Jörg Schwinger, Roland Séférian, Jamie D. Shutler, Ingunn Skjelvan, Tobias Steinhoff, Qing Sun, Adrienne J. Sutton, Colm Sweeney, Shintaro Takao, Toste Tanhua, Pieter P. Tans, Xiangjun Tian, Hanqin Tian, Bronte Tilbrook, Hiroyuki Tsujino, Francesco Tubiello, Guido R. van der Werf, Anthony P. Walker, Rik Wanninkhof, Chris Whitehead, Anna Willstrand Wranne, Rebecca Wright, Wenping Yuan, Chao Yue, Xu Yue, Sönke Zaehle, Jiye Zeng, and Bo Zheng
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 4811–4900, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4811-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4811-2022, 2022
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The Global Carbon Budget 2022 describes the datasets and methodology used to quantify the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and their partitioning among the atmosphere, the land ecosystems, and the ocean. These living datasets are updated every year to provide the highest transparency and traceability in the reporting of CO2, the key driver of climate change.
Na Li, Sebastian Sippel, Alexander J. Winkler, Miguel D. Mahecha, Markus Reichstein, and Ana Bastos
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1505–1533, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1505-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1505-2022, 2022
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Quantifying the imprint of large-scale atmospheric circulation dynamics and associated carbon cycle responses is key to improving our understanding of carbon cycle dynamics. Using a statistical model that relies on spatiotemporal sea level pressure as a proxy for large-scale atmospheric circulation, we quantify the fraction of interannual variability in atmospheric CO2 growth rate and the land CO2 sink that are driven by atmospheric circulation variability.
Melissa Ruiz-Vásquez, Sungmin O, Alexander Brenning, Randal D. Koster, Gianpaolo Balsamo, Ulrich Weber, Gabriele Arduini, Ana Bastos, Markus Reichstein, and René Orth
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1451–1471, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1451-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1451-2022, 2022
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Subseasonal forecasts facilitate early warning of extreme events; however their predictability sources are not fully explored. We find that global temperature forecast errors in many regions are related to climate variables such as solar radiation and precipitation, as well as land surface variables such as soil moisture and evaporative fraction. A better representation of these variables in the forecasting and data assimilation systems can support the accuracy of temperature forecasts.
Steven J. De Hertog, Felix Havermann, Inne Vanderkelen, Suqi Guo, Fei Luo, Iris Manola, Dim Coumou, Edouard L. Davin, Gregory Duveiller, Quentin Lejeune, Julia Pongratz, Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, Sonia I. Seneviratne, and Wim Thiery
Earth Syst. Dynam., 13, 1305–1350, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1305-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1305-2022, 2022
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Land cover and land management changes are important strategies for future land-based mitigation. We investigate the climate effects of cropland expansion, afforestation, irrigation, and wood harvesting using three Earth system models. Results show that these have important implications for surface temperature where the land cover and/or management change occurs and in remote areas. Idealized afforestation causes global warming, which might offset the cooling effect from enhanced carbon uptake.
Xin Yu, René Orth, Markus Reichstein, Michael Bahn, Anne Klosterhalfen, Alexander Knohl, Franziska Koebsch, Mirco Migliavacca, Martina Mund, Jacob A. Nelson, Benjamin D. Stocker, Sophia Walther, and Ana Bastos
Biogeosciences, 19, 4315–4329, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-4315-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-19-4315-2022, 2022
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Identifying drought legacy effects is challenging because they are superimposed on variability driven by climate conditions in the recovery period. We develop a residual-based approach to quantify legacies on gross primary productivity (GPP) from eddy covariance data. The GPP reduction due to legacy effects is comparable to the concurrent effects at two sites in Germany, which reveals the importance of legacy effects. Our novel methodology can be used to quantify drought legacies elsewhere.
Shakirudeen Lawal, Stephen Sitch, Danica Lombardozzi, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Hao-Wei Wey, Pierre Friedlingstein, Hanqin Tian, and Bruce Hewitson
Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 26, 2045–2071, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-2045-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-26-2045-2022, 2022
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To investigate the impacts of drought on vegetation, which few studies have done due to various limitations, we used the leaf area index as proxy and dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) to simulate drought impacts because the models use observationally derived climate. We found that the semi-desert biome responds strongly to drought in the summer season, while the tropical forest biome shows a weak response. This study could help target areas to improve drought monitoring and simulation.
Pierre Friedlingstein, Matthew W. Jones, Michael O'Sullivan, Robbie M. Andrew, Dorothee C. E. Bakker, Judith Hauck, Corinne Le Quéré, Glen P. Peters, Wouter Peters, Julia Pongratz, Stephen Sitch, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Rob B. Jackson, Simone R. Alin, Peter Anthoni, Nicholas R. Bates, Meike Becker, Nicolas Bellouin, Laurent Bopp, Thi Tuyet Trang Chau, Frédéric Chevallier, Louise P. Chini, Margot Cronin, Kim I. Currie, Bertrand Decharme, Laique M. Djeutchouang, Xinyu Dou, Wiley Evans, Richard A. Feely, Liang Feng, Thomas Gasser, Dennis Gilfillan, Thanos Gkritzalis, Giacomo Grassi, Luke Gregor, Nicolas Gruber, Özgür Gürses, Ian Harris, Richard A. Houghton, George C. Hurtt, Yosuke Iida, Tatiana Ilyina, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Atul Jain, Steve D. Jones, Etsushi Kato, Daniel Kennedy, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Jürgen Knauer, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Arne Körtzinger, Peter Landschützer, Siv K. Lauvset, Nathalie Lefèvre, Sebastian Lienert, Junjie Liu, Gregg Marland, Patrick C. McGuire, Joe R. Melton, David R. Munro, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Shin-Ichiro Nakaoka, Yosuke Niwa, Tsuneo Ono, Denis Pierrot, Benjamin Poulter, Gregor Rehder, Laure Resplandy, Eddy Robertson, Christian Rödenbeck, Thais M. Rosan, Jörg Schwinger, Clemens Schwingshackl, Roland Séférian, Adrienne J. Sutton, Colm Sweeney, Toste Tanhua, Pieter P. Tans, Hanqin Tian, Bronte Tilbrook, Francesco Tubiello, Guido R. van der Werf, Nicolas Vuichard, Chisato Wada, Rik Wanninkhof, Andrew J. Watson, David Willis, Andrew J. Wiltshire, Wenping Yuan, Chao Yue, Xu Yue, Sönke Zaehle, and Jiye Zeng
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 1917–2005, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1917-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1917-2022, 2022
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The Global Carbon Budget 2021 describes the data sets and methodology used to quantify the emissions of carbon dioxide and their partitioning among the atmosphere, land, and ocean. These living data are updated every year to provide the highest transparency and traceability in the reporting of CO2, the key driver of climate change.
Zhu Deng, Philippe Ciais, Zitely A. Tzompa-Sosa, Marielle Saunois, Chunjing Qiu, Chang Tan, Taochun Sun, Piyu Ke, Yanan Cui, Katsumasa Tanaka, Xin Lin, Rona L. Thompson, Hanqin Tian, Yuanzhi Yao, Yuanyuan Huang, Ronny Lauerwald, Atul K. Jain, Xiaoming Xu, Ana Bastos, Stephen Sitch, Paul I. Palmer, Thomas Lauvaux, Alexandre d'Aspremont, Clément Giron, Antoine Benoit, Benjamin Poulter, Jinfeng Chang, Ana Maria Roxana Petrescu, Steven J. Davis, Zhu Liu, Giacomo Grassi, Clément Albergel, Francesco N. Tubiello, Lucia Perugini, Wouter Peters, and Frédéric Chevallier
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 14, 1639–1675, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1639-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1639-2022, 2022
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In support of the global stocktake of the Paris Agreement on climate change, we proposed a method for reconciling the results of global atmospheric inversions with data from UNFCCC national greenhouse gas inventories (NGHGIs). Here, based on a new global harmonized database that we compiled from the UNFCCC NGHGIs and a comprehensive framework presented in this study to process the results of inversions, we compared their results of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O).
Philippe Ciais, Ana Bastos, Frédéric Chevallier, Ronny Lauerwald, Ben Poulter, Josep G. Canadell, Gustaf Hugelius, Robert B. Jackson, Atul Jain, Matthew Jones, Masayuki Kondo, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Prabir K. Patra, Wouter Peters, Julia Pongratz, Ana Maria Roxana Petrescu, Shilong Piao, Chunjing Qiu, Celso Von Randow, Pierre Regnier, Marielle Saunois, Robert Scholes, Anatoly Shvidenko, Hanqin Tian, Hui Yang, Xuhui Wang, and Bo Zheng
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 1289–1316, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-1289-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-1289-2022, 2022
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The second phase of the Regional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP) will provide updated quantification and process understanding of CO2, CH4, and N2O emissions and sinks for ten regions of the globe. In this paper, we give definitions, review different methods, and make recommendations for estimating different components of the total land–atmosphere carbon exchange for each region in a consistent and complete approach.
Jan C. Minx, William F. Lamb, Robbie M. Andrew, Josep G. Canadell, Monica Crippa, Niklas Döbbeling, Piers M. Forster, Diego Guizzardi, Jos Olivier, Glen P. Peters, Julia Pongratz, Andy Reisinger, Matthew Rigby, Marielle Saunois, Steven J. Smith, Efisio Solazzo, and Hanqin Tian
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 5213–5252, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-5213-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-5213-2021, 2021
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We provide a synthetic dataset on anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for 1970–2018 with a fast-track extension to 2019. We show that GHG emissions continued to rise across all gases and sectors. Annual average GHG emissions growth slowed, but absolute decadal increases have never been higher in human history. We identify a number of data gaps and data quality issues in global inventories and highlight their importance for monitoring progress towards international climate goals.
Lina Teckentrup, Martin G. De Kauwe, Andrew J. Pitman, Daniel S. Goll, Vanessa Haverd, Atul K. Jain, Emilie Joetzjer, Etsushi Kato, Sebastian Lienert, Danica Lombardozzi, Patrick C. McGuire, Joe R. Melton, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Julia Pongratz, Stephen Sitch, Anthony P. Walker, and Sönke Zaehle
Biogeosciences, 18, 5639–5668, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-5639-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-5639-2021, 2021
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The Australian continent is included in global assessments of the carbon cycle such as the global carbon budget, yet the performance of dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) over Australia has rarely been evaluated. We assessed simulations by an ensemble of dynamic global vegetation models over Australia and highlighted a number of key areas that lead to model divergence on both short (inter-annual) and long (decadal) timescales.
Ana Bastos, René Orth, Markus Reichstein, Philippe Ciais, Nicolas Viovy, Sönke Zaehle, Peter Anthoni, Almut Arneth, Pierre Gentine, Emilie Joetzjer, Sebastian Lienert, Tammas Loughran, Patrick C. McGuire, Sungmin O, Julia Pongratz, and Stephen Sitch
Earth Syst. Dynam., 12, 1015–1035, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-1015-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-1015-2021, 2021
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Temperate biomes in Europe are not prone to recurrent dry and hot conditions in summer. However, these conditions may become more frequent in the coming decades. Because stress conditions can leave legacies for many years, this may result in reduced ecosystem resilience under recurrent stress. We assess vegetation vulnerability to the hot and dry summers in 2018 and 2019 in Europe and find the important role of inter-annual legacy effects from 2018 in modulating the impacts of the 2019 event.
Guilherme L. Torres Mendonça, Julia Pongratz, and Christian H. Reick
Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 28, 501–532, https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-28-501-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-28-501-2021, 2021
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Linear response functions are a powerful tool to both predict and investigate the dynamics of a system when subjected to small perturbations. In practice, these functions must often be derived from perturbation experiment data. Nevertheless, current methods for this identification require a tailored perturbation experiment, often with many realizations. We present a method that instead derives these functions from a single realization of an experiment driven by any type of perturbation.
Guilherme L. Torres Mendonça, Julia Pongratz, and Christian H. Reick
Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 28, 533–564, https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-28-533-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/npg-28-533-2021, 2021
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We apply a new identification method to derive the response functions that characterize the sensitivity of the land carbon cycle to CO2 perturbations in an Earth system model. By means of these response functions, which generalize the usually employed single-valued sensitivities, we can reliably predict the response of the land carbon to weak perturbations. Further, we demonstrate how by this new method one can robustly derive and interpret internal spectra of timescales of the system.
Alexander J. Winkler, Ranga B. Myneni, Alexis Hannart, Stephen Sitch, Vanessa Haverd, Danica Lombardozzi, Vivek K. Arora, Julia Pongratz, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Daniel S. Goll, Etsushi Kato, Hanqin Tian, Almut Arneth, Pierre Friedlingstein, Atul K. Jain, Sönke Zaehle, and Victor Brovkin
Biogeosciences, 18, 4985–5010, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4985-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4985-2021, 2021
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Satellite observations since the early 1980s show that Earth's greening trend is slowing down and that browning clusters have been emerging, especially in the last 2 decades. A collection of model simulations in conjunction with causal theory points at climatic changes as a key driver of vegetation changes in natural ecosystems. Most models underestimate the observed vegetation browning, especially in tropical rainforests, which could be due to an excessive CO2 fertilization effect in models.
Louise Chini, George Hurtt, Ritvik Sahajpal, Steve Frolking, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Stephen Sitch, Raphael Ganzenmüller, Lei Ma, Lesley Ott, Julia Pongratz, and Benjamin Poulter
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 4175–4189, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4175-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-4175-2021, 2021
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Carbon emissions from land-use change are a large and uncertain component of the global carbon cycle. The Land-Use Harmonization 2 (LUH2) dataset was developed as an input to carbon and climate simulations and has been updated annually for the Global Carbon Budget (GCB) assessments. Here we discuss the methodology for producing these annual LUH2 updates and describe the 2019 version which used new cropland and grazing land data inputs for the globally important region of Brazil.
Kerstin Hartung, Ana Bastos, Louise Chini, Raphael Ganzenmüller, Felix Havermann, George C. Hurtt, Tammas Loughran, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Tobias Nützel, Wolfgang A. Obermeier, and Julia Pongratz
Earth Syst. Dynam., 12, 763–782, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-763-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-763-2021, 2021
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In this study, we model the relative importance of several contributors to the land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) flux based on a LULCC dataset including uncertainty estimates. The uncertainty of LULCC is as relevant as applying wood harvest and gross transitions for the cumulative LULCC flux over the industrial period. However, LULCC uncertainty matters less than the other two factors for the LULCC flux in 2014; historical LULCC uncertainty is negligible for estimates of future scenarios.
Ana Maria Roxana Petrescu, Matthew J. McGrath, Robbie M. Andrew, Philippe Peylin, Glen P. Peters, Philippe Ciais, Gregoire Broquet, Francesco N. Tubiello, Christoph Gerbig, Julia Pongratz, Greet Janssens-Maenhout, Giacomo Grassi, Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Pierre Regnier, Ronny Lauerwald, Matthias Kuhnert, Juraj Balkovič, Mart-Jan Schelhaas, Hugo A. C. Denier van der
Gon, Efisio Solazzo, Chunjing Qiu, Roberto Pilli, Igor B. Konovalov, Richard A. Houghton, Dirk Günther, Lucia Perugini, Monica Crippa, Raphael Ganzenmüller, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Pete Smith, Saqr Munassar, Rona L. Thompson, Giulia Conchedda, Guillaume Monteil, Marko Scholze, Ute Karstens, Patrick Brockmann, and Albertus Johannes Dolman
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 2363–2406, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-2363-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-2363-2021, 2021
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This study is topical and provides a state-of-the-art scientific overview of data availability from bottom-up and top-down CO2 fossil emissions and CO2 land fluxes in the EU27+UK. The data integrate recent emission inventories with ecosystem data, land carbon models and regional/global inversions for the European domain, aiming at reconciling CO2 estimates with official country-level UNFCCC national GHG inventories in support to policy and facilitating real-time verification procedures.
Wolfgang A. Obermeier, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Tammas Loughran, Kerstin Hartung, Ana Bastos, Felix Havermann, Peter Anthoni, Almut Arneth, Daniel S. Goll, Sebastian Lienert, Danica Lombardozzi, Sebastiaan Luyssaert, Patrick C. McGuire, Joe R. Melton, Benjamin Poulter, Stephen Sitch, Michael O. Sullivan, Hanqin Tian, Anthony P. Walker, Andrew J. Wiltshire, Soenke Zaehle, and Julia Pongratz
Earth Syst. Dynam., 12, 635–670, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-635-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-635-2021, 2021
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We provide the first spatio-temporally explicit comparison of different model-derived fluxes from land use and land cover changes (fLULCCs) by using the TRENDY v8 dynamic global vegetation models used in the 2019 global carbon budget. We find huge regional fLULCC differences resulting from environmental assumptions, simulated periods, and the timing of land use and land cover changes, and we argue for a method consistent across time and space and for carefully choosing the accounting period.
Zichong Chen, Junjie Liu, Daven K. Henze, Deborah N. Huntzinger, Kelley C. Wells, Stephen Sitch, Pierre Friedlingstein, Emilie Joetzjer, Vladislav Bastrikov, Daniel S. Goll, Vanessa Haverd, Atul K. Jain, Etsushi Kato, Sebastian Lienert, Danica L. Lombardozzi, Patrick C. McGuire, Joe R. Melton, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Benjamin Poulter, Hanqin Tian, Andrew J. Wiltshire, Sönke Zaehle, and Scot M. Miller
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 6663–6680, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-6663-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-6663-2021, 2021
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NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) satellite observes atmospheric CO2 globally. We use a multiple regression and inverse model to quantify the relationships between OCO-2 and environmental drivers within individual years for 2015–2018 and within seven global biomes. Our results point to limitations of current space-based observations for inferring environmental relationships but also indicate the potential to inform key relationships that are very uncertain in process-based models.
Daniele Peano, Deborah Hemming, Stefano Materia, Christine Delire, Yuanchao Fan, Emilie Joetzjer, Hanna Lee, Julia E. M. S. Nabel, Taejin Park, Philippe Peylin, David Wårlind, Andy Wiltshire, and Sönke Zaehle
Biogeosciences, 18, 2405–2428, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-2405-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-2405-2021, 2021
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Global climate models are the scientist’s tools used for studying past, present, and future climate conditions. This work examines the ability of a group of our tools in reproducing and capturing the right timing and length of the season when plants show their green leaves. This season, indeed, is fundamental for CO2 exchanges between land, atmosphere, and climate. This work shows that discrepancies compared to observations remain, demanding further polishing of these tools.
Anja Katzenberger, Jacob Schewe, Julia Pongratz, and Anders Levermann
Earth Syst. Dynam., 12, 367–386, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-367-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-12-367-2021, 2021
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All state-of-the-art global climate models that contributed to the latest Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) show a robust increase in Indian summer monsoon rainfall that is even stronger than in the previous intercomparison (CMIP5). Furthermore, they show an increase in the year-to-year variability of this seasonal rainfall that crucially influences the livelihood of more than 1 billion people in India.
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Short summary
Fluxes from land-use change and management (FLUC) are a large source of uncertainty in global and regional carbon budgets. Here, we evaluate the impact of different model parameterisations on FLUC. We show that carbon stock densities and allocation of carbon following transitions contribute more to uncertainty in FLUC than response-curve time constants. Uncertainty in FLUC could thus, in principle, be reduced by available Earth-observation data on carbon densities at a global scale.
Fluxes from land-use change and management (FLUC) are a large source of uncertainty in global...
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