The Australian terrestrial carbon budget

Haverd, Vanessa; Raupach, Michael; Briggs, Peter R.; Canadell, Josep G.; Davis, Steven J.; Law, R. M.; Meyer, C. P.; Peters, Glen P.; Pickett-Heaps, C.; Sherman, Bradford S.

doi:10.5194/bg-10-851-2013

Cited by 126 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 51 publications

(59 reference statements)

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“…The run based on the CASA-GFED model only shows very limited variability in the 3 monthly biosphere fluxes, while the GOSAT-based one shows a strong drop starting in 2010 and lasting until early 2012. Based on the calculated 3 monthly fluxes in Figure 4, we estimate the strength of the enhancement of the carbon sink to be roughly 0.77 ± 0.10 Pg C yr −1 or 1.5 ± 0.2 Pg C for the whole period of April 2010 to December 2011, which corresponds to 25% of the total multiyear (1990-2011) average GPP of the Australian biosphere and 1000% of the average annual net ecosystem production [Haverd et al, 2013]. Compared to the enhanced LPJ sink reported in Poulter et al [2014], we derived a 2011 enhancement in the sink of 0.86 ± 0.15 Pg C, which is very similar to the 0.79 Pg C quoted in that publication.…”

Section: Biosphere Model Comparisonmentioning

confidence: 98%

Anomalous carbon uptake in Australia as seen by GOSAT

Detmers

Hasekamp

Aben

et al. 2015

Geophysical Research Letters

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One of the unanswered questions of climate change is how the biospheric uptake of carbon responds to events such as droughts and floods. Especially, semiarid regions have received interest recently, as they can respond very rapidly to changing environmental conditions. Here we report on a large enhanced carbon sink over Australia from the end of 2010 to early 2012 detected using the Greenhouse Gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT). This enhanced sink coincides with the strong La Niña episode, accompanied by record‐breaking amounts of precipitation. This precipitation led to an enhanced growth of vegetation, resulting in large increases in biospheric carbon uptake in line with increased levels of vegetation fluorescence. An inversion based on the satellite retrievals confirms this strong anomaly in the sink of roughly 0.21 ± 0.03 Pg C yr−1 or 0.41 ± 0.5 Pg C in total for the April 2010 to December 2011 period, which corresponds to 7% of the multiyear annual average gross primary production of the Australian biosphere.

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Section: Biosphere Model Comparisonmentioning

confidence: 98%

Anomalous carbon uptake in Australia as seen by GOSAT

Detmers

Hasekamp

Aben

et al. 2015

Geophysical Research Letters

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“…2.3.4. The RECCAP regions include North America (NA; King et al, 2015), South America (SA; Gloor et al, 2012), Europe (EU; Luyssaert et al, 2012), Africa (AF; Valentini et al, 2014), Russia (RU; Dolman et al, 2012), East Asia (EA; Piao et al, 2012), South Asia (SAs; Patra et al, 2013), and Australia (AU; Haverd et al, 2013). No regional study is yet available for Southeast Asia (SEA).…”

Section: Reccap Over Landmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reviews and syntheses: An empirical spatiotemporal description of the global surface–atmosphere carbon fluxes: opportunities and data limitations

et al. 2017

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Abstract. Understanding the global carbon (C) cycle is of crucial importance to map current and future climate dynamics relative to global environmental change. A full characterization of C cycling requires detailed information on spatiotemporal patterns of surface-atmosphere fluxes. However, relevant C cycle observations are highly variable in their coverage and reporting standards. Especially problematic is the lack of integration of the carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) exchange of the ocean, inland freshwaters and the land surface with the atmosphere. Here we adopt a data-driven approach to synthesize a wide range of observation-based spatially explicit surface-atmosphere CO 2 fluxes from 2001 to 2010, to identify the state of today's observational opportunities and data limitations. The considered fluxes include net exchange of open oceans, continental shelves, estuaries, rivers, and lakes, as well as CO 2 fluxes related to net ecosystem productivity, fire emissions, loss of tropical aboveground C, harvested wood and crops, as well as fossil fuel and cement emissions. Spatially explicit CO 2 fluxes are obtained through geostatistical and/or remote-sensing-based upscaling, thereby minimizing biophysical or biogeochemical assumptions encoded in process-based models. We estimate a bottom-up net C exchange (NCE) between the surface (land, ocean, and coastal areas) and the atmosphere. Though we provide also global estimates, the primary goal of this study is to identify key uncertainties and observational shortcomings that need to be prioritized in the expansion of in situ observatories. Uncertainties for NCE and its components are derived using resampling. In many regions, our NCE estimates agree well with independent estimates from other sources such as processbased models and atmospheric inversions. This holds for Europe (mean ± 1 SD: 0.8 ± 0.1 PgC yr −1 , positive numbers are sources to the atmosphere), Russia (0.1 ± 0.4 PgC yr −1 ), East Asia (1.6 ± 0.3 PgC yr −1 ), South Asia (0.3 ± 0.1 PgC yr −1 ), Australia (0.2 ± 0.3 PgC yr −1 ), and most of the Ocean regions. Our NCE estimates give a likely too large CO 2 sink in tropical areas such as the Amazon, Congo, and Indonesia. Overall, and because of the overestimated CO 2 uptake in tropical lands, our global bottom-up NCE amounts to a net sink of −5.4 ± 2.0 PgC yr −1 . By contrast, the accurately measured mean atmospheric growth rate of CO 2 over [2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009][2010] indicates that the true value of NCE is a net CO 2 source of 4.3 ± 0.1 PgC yr −1 . This mismatch of nearly 10 PgC yr −1 highlights observational gaps and limitations of data-driven models in tropical lands, but also in North America. Our uncertainty assessment provides the basis for setting priority regions where to increase carbon observations in the future. High on the priority list are tropical land regions, which suffer from a lack of in situ observations. Second, extensive pCO 2 data are missing in the Southern Ocean. Third, we lack observations that could enable...

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“…Quantifying North America's net land-atmosphere CO 2 exchange, potentially offsetting at least a portion of North America's CO 2 emissions, is an important element of understanding and quantifying North America's contribution to the accelerating increase in atmospheric CO 2 concentrations (Le Quéré et al, 2014). Our approach was guided by (a) ; (b) RECCAP syntheses for other regions (Dolman et al, 2012;Gloor et al, 2012;Haverd et al, 2013;Luyssaert et al, 2012;Patra et al, 2013;Piao et al, 2012;Valentini et al, 2014); (c) guidelines found at the REC-CAP website (http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/reccap/); and (d) personal communications with J. G. as Coordinator of the RECCAP Science Steering Committee. This study focuses on estimates of land-atmosphere CO 2 exchange over Canada, the United States and Mexico.…”

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confidence: 99%

North America's net terrestrial CO<sub>2</sub> exchange with the atmosphere 1990–2009

et al. 2015

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Abstract. Scientific understanding of the global carbon cycle is required for developing national and international policy to mitigate fossil fuel CO 2 emissions by managing terrestrial carbon uptake. Toward that understanding and as a contribution to the REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP) project, this paper provides a synthesis of net land-atmosphere CO 2 exchange for North America (Canada, United States, and Mexico) over the period [1990][1991][1992][1993][1994][1995][1996][1997][1998][1999][2000][2001][2002][2003][2004][2005][2006][2007][2008][2009]. Only CO 2 is considered, not methane or other greenhouse gases. This synthesis is based on results from three different methods: atmospheric inversion, inventory-based methods and terrestrial biosphere modeling. All methods indicate that the North American land surface was a sink for atmospheric CO 2 , with a net transfer from atmosphere to land. Estimates ranged from −890 to −280 Tg C yr −1 , where the mean of atmospheric inversion estimates forms the lower bound of that range (a larger land sink) and the inventory-based estimate using the production approach the upper (a smaller land sink). This relatively large range is due in part to differences in how the approaches represent trade, fire and other disturbances and which ecosystems they include. Integrating across estimates, "best" estimates (i.e., measures of central tendency) are −472 ± 281 Tg C yr −1 based on the mean and standard deviation of the distribution and −360 Tg C yr −1 (with an interquartile range of −496 to −337) based on the median. Considering both the fossil fuel emissions source and the land sink, our analysis shows that North America was, however, a net contributor to the growth of CO 2 in the atmosphere in the late 20th and early 21st century. With North America's mean annual fossil fuel CO 2 emissions for the period 1990-2009 equal to 1720 Tg C yr −1 and assuming the estimate of −472 Tg C yr −1 as an approximation of the true terrestrial CO 2 sink, the continent's source : sink ratio for this time period was 1720 : 472, or nearly 4 : 1.

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The Australian terrestrial carbon budget

Cited by 126 publications

References 51 publications

Anomalous carbon uptake in Australia as seen by GOSAT

Anomalous carbon uptake in Australia as seen by GOSAT

Reviews and syntheses: An empirical spatiotemporal description of the global surface–atmosphere carbon fluxes: opportunities and data limitations

North America's net terrestrial CO<sub>2</sub> exchange with the atmosphere 1990–2009

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The Australian terrestrial carbon budget

Cited by 126 publications

References 51 publications

Anomalous carbon uptake in Australia as seen by GOSAT

Anomalous carbon uptake in Australia as seen by GOSAT

Reviews and syntheses: An empirical spatiotemporal description of the global surface–atmosphere carbon fluxes: opportunities and data limitations

North America's net terrestrial CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; exchange with the atmosphere 1990–2009

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North America's net terrestrial CO<sub>2</sub> exchange with the atmosphere 1990–2009