Tracking 21st century anthropogenic and natural carbon fluxes through model-data integration

Bultan, Selma ; Nabel, Julia E. M. S. ; Hartung, Kerstin ; Ganzenmüller, Raphael ; Xu, Liang ; Saatchi, Sassan; Pongratz, Julia (2022): Tracking 21st century anthropogenic and natural carbon fluxes through model-data integration. Nature Communications, 13: 5516. ISSN 2041-1723

Abstract

Monitoring the implementation of emission commitments under the Paris agreement relies on accurate estimates of terrestrial carbon fluxes. Here, we assimilate a 21st century observation-based time series of woody vegetation carbon densities into a bookkeeping model (BKM). This approach allows us to disentangle the observation-based carbon fluxes by terrestrial woody vegetation into anthropogenic and environmental contributions. Estimated emissions (from land-use and land cover changes) between 2000 and 2019 amount to 1.4 PgC yr −1 , reducing the difference to other carbon cycle model estimates by up to 88% compared to previous estimates with the BKM (without the data assimilation). Our estimates suggest that the global woody vegetation carbon sink due to environmental processes (1.5 PgC yr −1 ) is weaker and more susceptible to interannual variations and extreme events than estimated by state-of-the-art process-based carbon cycle models. These findings highlight the need to advance model-data integration to improve estimates of the terrestrial carbon cycle under the Global Stocktake.

• Doc-Type: Article (LMU)
• Organisational unit (Faculties): 20 Geosciences > Department of Geography > Physical Geography and Land Use Systems
• DFG subject classification of scientific disciplines: Natural sciences
• DFG: Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) - 491502892