Reconciling global-model estimates and country reporting of anthropogenic forest CO2 sinks

Achieving the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement requires forest-based mitigation. Collective progress towards this goal will be assessed by the Paris Agreement’s Global stocktake. At present, there is a discrepancy of about 4 GtCO2 yr−1 in global anthropogenic net land-use emissions...

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Published in:Nature climate change Vol. 8; no. 10; pp. 914 - 920
Main Authors: Grassi, Giacomo, House, Jo, Kurz, Werner A, Cescatti, Alessandro, Houghton, Richard A, Peters, Glen P, Sanz, Maria J, Raul Abad Viñas, Alkama, Ramdane, Arneth, Almut, Alberte Bondeau, Dentener, Frank, Fader, Marianela, Federici, Sandro, Friedlingstein, Pierre, Jain, Atul K, Kato, Etsushi, Koven, Charles D, Lee, Donna, Julia E M S Nabel, Nassikas, Alexander A, Perugini, Lucia, Rossi, Simone, Sitch, Stephen, Viovy, Nicolas, Wiltshire, Andy, Zaehle, Sönke
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group 01.10.2018
Subjects:
Anthropogenic factors
Carbon dioxide
Carbon footprint
Disaggregation
Emission inventories
Environmental changes
Environmental impact
Forests
Greenhouse gases
Human influences
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Inventories
Inventory management
Land use
Mitigation
Paris Agreement
Temperature requirements
Tracking
ISSN:1758-678X, 1758-6798
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Summary:Achieving the long-term temperature goal of the Paris Agreement requires forest-based mitigation. Collective progress towards this goal will be assessed by the Paris Agreement’s Global stocktake. At present, there is a discrepancy of about 4 GtCO2 yr−1 in global anthropogenic net land-use emissions between global models (reflected in IPCC assessment reports) and aggregated national GHG inventories (under the UNFCCC). We show that a substantial part of this discrepancy (about 3.2 GtCO2 yr−1) can be explained by conceptual differences in anthropogenic forest sink estimation, related to the representation of environmental change impacts and the areas considered as managed. For a more credible tracking of collective progress under the Global stocktake, these conceptual differences between models and inventories need to be reconciled. We implement a new method of disaggregation of global land model results that allows greater comparability with GHG inventories. This provides a deeper understanding of model–inventory differences, allowing more transparent analysis of forest-based mitigation and facilitating a more accurate Global stocktake.
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ISSN:1758-678X
1758-6798
DOI:10.1038/s41558-018-0283-x