Robust estimates of CO2budget, CO2exchanged between the atmosphere and terrestrial biosphere, are necessary to better understand the role of the terrestrial biosphere in mitigating anthropogenic CO2emissions. Over the past decade, this field of research has advanced through understanding of the differences and similarities of two fundamentally different approaches: “top‐down” atmospheric inversions and “bottom‐up” biosphere models. Since the first studies were undertaken, these approaches have shown an increasing level of agreement, but disagreements in some regions still persist, in part because they do not estimate the same quantity of atmosphere–biosphere CO2exchange. Here, we conducted a thorough comparison of CO2budgets at multiple scales and from multiple methods to assess the current state of the science in estimating CO2budgets. Our set of atmospheric inversions and biosphere models, which were adjusted for a consistent flux definition, showed a high level of agreement for global and hemispheric CO2budgets in the 2000s. Regionally, improved agreement in CO2budgets was notable for North America and Southeast Asia. However, large gaps between the two methods remained in East Asia and South America. In other regions, Europe, boreal Asia, Africa, South Asia, and Oceania, it was difficult to determine whether those regions act as a net sink or source because of the large spread in estimates from atmospheric inversions. These results highlight two research directions to improve the robustness of CO2budgets: (a) to increase representation of processes in biosphere models that could contribute to fill the budget gaps, such as forest regrowth and forest degradation; and (b) to reduce sink–source compensation between regions (dipoles) in atmospheric inversion so that their estimates become more comparable. Advancements on both research areas will increase the level of agreement between the top‐down and bottom‐up approaches and yield more robust knowledge of regional CO2budgets.
The Global Carbon Budget 2018 (GCB2018) estimated by the atmospheric CO
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10455022
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.1029
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Global Biogeochemical Cycles
- Volume:
- 34
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0886-6236
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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