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Abstract The air‐sea exchange of oxygen (O₂) is driven by changes in solubility, biological activity, and circulation. The total air‐sea exchange of O₂has been shown to be closely related to the air‐sea exchange of heat on seasonal timescales, with the ratio of the seasonal flux of O₂to heat varying with latitude, being higher in the extratropics and lower in the subtropics. This O₂/heat ratio is both a fundamental biogeochemical property of air‐sea exchange and a convenient metric for testing earth system models. Current estimates of the O₂/heat flux ratio rely on sparse observations of dissolved O₂, leaving it fairly unconstrained. From a model ensemble we show that the ratio of the seasonal amplitude of two atmospheric tracers, atmospheric potential oxygen (APO) and the argon‐to‐nitrogen ratio (Ar/O₂), exhibits a close relationship to the O₂/heat ratio of the extratropics (40–). The amplitude ratio,/, is relatively constant within the extratropics of each hemisphere due to the zonal mixing of the atmosphere./is not sensitive to atmospheric transport, as most of the observed spatial variability in the seasonal amplitude ofAPO is compensated by similar variations in(Ar/). From the relationship between/heat and/in the model ensemble, we determine that the atmospheric observations suggest hemispherically distinct/heat flux ratios of 3.30.3 and 4.70.8 nmolbetween 40 andin the Northern and Southern Hemispheres respectively, providing a useful constraint forand heat air‐sea fluxes in earth system models and observation‐based data products. 

Abstract. Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere – the global carbon budget – is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe data sets and methodology to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry (EFF) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, respectively, while emissions from land-use change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on land-cover change data and bookkeeping models. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) and terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) are estimated with global process models constrained by observations. The resulting carbon budget imbalance (BIM), the difference between the estimated total emissions and the estimated changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere, is a measure of imperfect data and understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the last decade available (2007–2016), EFF was 9.4 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, ELUC 1.3 ± 0.7 GtC yr−1, GATM 4.7 ± 0.1 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN 2.4 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, and SLAND 3.0 ± 0.8 GtC yr−1, with a budget imbalance BIM of 0.6 GtC yr−1 indicating overestimated emissions and/or underestimated sinks. For year 2016 alone, the growth in EFF was approximately zero and emissions remained at 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1. Also for 2016, ELUC was 1.3 ± 0.7 GtC yr−1, GATM was 6.1 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN was 2.6 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, and SLAND was 2.7 ± 1.0 GtC yr−1, with a small BIM of −0.3 GtC. GATM continued to be higher in 2016 compared to the past decade (2007–2016), reflecting in part the high fossil emissions and the small SLAND consistent with El Niño conditions. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 402.8 ± 0.1 ppm averaged over 2016. For 2017, preliminary data for the first 6–9 months indicate a renewed growth in EFF of +2.0 % (range of 0.8 to 3.0 %) based on national emissions projections for China, USA, and India, and projections of gross domestic product (GDP) corrected for recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy for the rest of the world. This living data update documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new global carbon budget compared with previous publications of this data set (Le Quéré et al., 2016, 2015b, a, 2014, 2013). All results presented here can be downloaded from https://doi.org/10.18160/GCP-2017 (GCP, 2017).