Critical adjustment of land mitigation pathways for assessing countries’ climate progress

Grassi, Giacomo; Stehfest, Elke; Rogelj, Joeri; Vuuren, Detlef van; Cescatti, Alessandro; House, Joanna Isobel; Nabuurs, G.J.; Rossi, Simone; Alkama, Ramdane; Viñas, Raúl Abad; Calvin, Katherine; Ceccherini, Guido; Federici, Sandro; Fujimori, Shinichiro; Gusti, M.; Hasegawa, Tomoko; Havlík, Petr; Humpenöder, Florian; Korosuo, Anu; Perugini, Lucia; Tubiello, Francesco N.; Popp, Alexander

doi:10.1038/s41558-021-01033-6

Cited by 84 publications

(96 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Over managed land, the CAMS, UoE and Jena models have a higher sink, CTE and NISMON give similar values, and MIROC gives a smaller sink than over all lands (See Table S1 for the list of models). In contrast, inventory data compiled by Grassi et al (2021) indicates a global land sink of only 0.3 GtC yr -1 . Such a large difference can be possibly explained by the fact that NIs are incomplete (especially in developing countries, and especially non-forest land uses such as cropland, grassland and wetlands) and do not fully capture recent environmental and meteorological effects, such as the impact of more frequent extreme weather events (droughts), and possibly by the lack of actual observation-based estimates in inventories to constrain soil carbon change, in grasslands, croplands and forests.…”

Section: Choice Of Example Countries For Analysismentioning

confidence: 90%

“…For this study, intact forest areas (that are unmanaged, by definition) were removed from the CO2 totals, in proportion to their presence in each inversion grid box, based on the Intact Forest Landscapes maps of Potapov et al (2017) shown in Figure S1. This approach assumes that non-intact forest represents a reasonably good proxy of managed forest reported in national GHG inventories (Grassi et al, 2021). In the absence of a machine-readable definition of the plots considered to be managed in many NIRs, this choice remains somewhat arbitrary and other unmanaged land datasets could have been used (Ogle et al, 2018;.…”

Section: National Masks -Fossil Fuel Emissions Regridding -Managed Land Maskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Altogether, the selected countries represent 54% of the global anthropogenic N2O emissions given by NIs. Grassi et al (2021) include Annex I countries reports, non-Annex I NC and BUR and FAOSTAT estimates for some non-Annex I countries. We took the average of Grassi et al (2021)for 2010 and 2015.…”

Section: Choice Of Example Countries For Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Grassi et al (2021) include Annex I countries reports, non-Annex I NC and BUR and FAOSTAT estimates for some non-Annex I countries. We took the average of Grassi et al (2021)for 2010 and 2015. Inversion median values were calculated for the period 2007-2017 that roughly cover these two years.…”

Section: Choice Of Example Countries For Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, the NIs of countries based on forestry models using static growth curves of representative forests do not necessarily capture the recent transient impact of environmental driver changes, see Supp. Table 1 of Grassi et al (2021) which includes information on the method (gain-loss or stock difference) used by several major countries. This may partially explain why inversions estimate higher CO2 sinks (e.g.…”

Section: Choice Of Example Countries For Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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Comparing national greenhouse gas budgets reported in UNFCCC inventories against atmospheric inversions

Deng

Ciais

Tzompa-Sosa

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Abstract. In support of the Global Stocktake of the Paris Agreement on Climate change, this study presents a comprehensive framework to process the results of atmospheric inversions in order to make them suitable for evaluating UNFCCC national inventories of land-use carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and removals, corresponding to the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry and waste sectors. We also deduced anthropogenic methane (CH4) emissions regrouped into fossil and agriculture and waste emissions, and anthropogenic nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions from inversions. To compare inversions with national reports, we compiled a new global harmonized database of national emissions and removals from periodical UNFCCC inventories by Annex I countries, and from sporadic and less detailed emissions reports by Non-Annex I countries, given by National Communications and Biennial Update Reports. The method to reconcile inversions with inventories is applied to selected large countries covering 78 % of the global land carbon uptake for CO2, as well as emissions and removals in the land use, land use change and forestry sector, and top-emitters of CH4 and N2O. Our method uses results from an ensemble of global inversions produced by the Global Carbon Project for the three greenhouse gases, with ancillary data. We examine the role of CO2 fluxes caused by lateral transfer processes from rivers and from trade in crop and wood products, and the role of carbon uptake in unmanaged lands, both not accounted for by the rules of inventories. Here we show that, despite a large spread across the inversions, the median of available inversion models points to a larger terrestrial carbon sink than inventories over temperate countries or groups of countries of the Northern Hemisphere like Russia, Canada and the European Union. For CH4, we find good consistency between the inversions assimilating only data from the global in-situ network and those using satellite CH4 retrievals, and a tendency for inversions to diagnose higher CH4 emissions estimates than reported by inventories. In particular, oil and gas extracting countries in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf region tend to systematically report lower emissions compared to those estimated by inversions. For N2O, inversions tend to produce higher anthropogenic emissions than inventories for tropical countries, even when attempting to consider only managed land emissions. In the inventories of many non-Annex I countries, this can be tentatively attributed to either a lack of reporting indirect N2O emissions from atmospheric deposition and from leaching to rivers, or to the existence of natural sources intertwined with managed lands, or to an under-estimation of N2O emission factors for direct agricultural soil emissions. The advantage of inversions is that they provide insights on seasonal and interannual greenhouse gas fluxes anomalies, e.g. during extreme events such as drought or abnormal fire episodes, whereas inventory methods are established to estimate trends and multi-annual changes. As a much denser sampling of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations by different satellites coordinated into a global constellation is expected in the coming years, the methodology proposed here to compare inversion results with inventory reports could be applied regularly for monitoring the effectiveness of mitigation policy and progress by countries to meet the objective of their pledges.

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Section: Choice Of Example Countries For Analysismentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: National Masks -Fossil Fuel Emissions Regridding -Managed Land Maskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Choice Of Example Countries For Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Choice Of Example Countries For Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Choice Of Example Countries For Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Comparing national greenhouse gas budgets reported in UNFCCC inventories against atmospheric inversions

Deng

Ciais

Tzompa-Sosa

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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Climate change mitigation potential of Louisiana's coastal area: Current estimates and future projections

Baustian

Liu

Moss

et al. 2023

Ecological Applications

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Coastal habitats can play an important role in climate change mitigation. As Louisiana implements its climate action plan and the restoration and risk‐reduction projects outlined in its 2017 Louisiana Coastal Master Plan, it is critical to consider potential greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes in coastal habitats. This study estimated the potential climate mitigation role of existing, converted, and restored coastal habitats for years 2005, 2020, 2025, 2030, and 2050, which align with the Governor of Louisiana's GHG reduction targets. An analytical framework was developed that considered (1) available scientific data on net ecosystem carbon balance fluxes per habitat and (2) habitat areas projected from modeling efforts used for the 2017 Louisiana Coastal Master Plan to estimate the net GHG flux of coastal area. The coastal area was estimated as net GHG sinks of −38.4 ± 10.6 and −43.2 ± 12.0 Tg CO2 equivalents (CO2e) in 2005 and 2020, respectively. The coastal area was projected to remain a net GHG sink in 2025 and 2030, both with and without the implementation of Coastal Master Plan projects (means ranged from −25.3 to −34.2 Tg CO2e). By 2050, with model‐projected wetland loss and conversion of coastal habitats to open water due to coastal erosion and relative sea level rise, Louisiana's coastal area was projected to become a net source of GHG emissions both with and without the Coastal Master Plan projects. However, in the year 2050, the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan project implementation was projected to avoid the release of +8.8 ± 1.3 Tg CO2e compared with an alternative with no action. Reduction in current and future stressors to coastal habitats, including impacts from sea level rise, as well as the implementation of restoration projects could help to ensure coastal areas remain a natural climate solution.

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Policy guidance and pitfalls aligning IPCC scenarios to national land emissions inventories

Gidden

Gasser

Grassi

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Taking stock of global progress towards achieving the Paris Agreement requires measuring aggregate national action against modelled mitigation pathways. Because of differences in how land-based carbon removals are defined, scientific sources report higher global carbon emissions than national emissions inventories, a gap which will evolve in the future. We establish a first estimate aligning IPCC-assessed pathways with inventories using a climate model to explicitly include indirect carbon removal dynamics on land area reported as managed for by countries. After alignment, we find that key global mitigation benchmarks can appear more ambitious when considering this extra land sink, though changes vary amongst world regions and temperature outcomes. Our results highlight the need to enhance communication between scientific and policy communities to enable more robust alignment in the future.

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Critical adjustment of land mitigation pathways for assessing countries’ climate progress

Cited by 84 publications

References 50 publications

Comparing national greenhouse gas budgets reported in UNFCCC inventories against atmospheric inversions

Comparing national greenhouse gas budgets reported in UNFCCC inventories against atmospheric inversions

Climate change mitigation potential of Louisiana's coastal area: Current estimates and future projections

Policy guidance and pitfalls aligning IPCC scenarios to national land emissions inventories

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