Decadal variability in land carbon sink efficiency

Carbon Balance and Management

Christian Rödenbeck¹  Ana Bastos²  Julia Pongratz³  Masayuki Kondo⁴  Thomas Gasser⁵  Frederic Chevallier⁶  Philippe Ciais⁶  Ashley P. Ballantyne⁷  Wei Li⁸  Lei Zhu⁸ 

[1] Department of Biogeochmical Systems, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany;Department of Geography, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, München, Germany;Department of Biogeochemical Integration, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany;Department of Geography, Ludwig-Maximilians Universität, München, Germany;Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany;Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan;Center for Global Environmental Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan;International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria;Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France;Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France;Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences, WA Franke College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA;Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China;Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing, China;

关键词: Land carbon sink efficiency;    Carbon neutrality;    Trend reversal;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s13021-021-00178-3

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe climate mitigation target of limiting the temperature increase below 2 °C above the pre-industrial levels requires the efforts from all countries. Tracking the trajectory of the land carbon sink efficiency is thus crucial to evaluate the nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Here, we define the instantaneous land sink efficiency as the ratio of natural land carbon sinks to emissions from fossil fuel and land-use and land-cover change with a value of 1 indicating carbon neutrality to track its temporal dynamics in the past decades.ResultsLand sink efficiency has been decreasing during 1957–1990 because of the increased emissions from fossil fuel. After the effect of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption diminished (after 1994), the land sink efficiency firstly increased before 2009 and then began to decrease again after 2009. This reversal around 2009 is mostly attributed to changes in land sinks in tropical regions in response to climate variations.ConclusionsThe decreasing trend of land sink efficiency in recent years reveals greater challenges in climate change mitigation, and that climate impacts on land carbon sinks must be accurately quantified to assess the effectiveness of regional scale climate mitigation policies.

【 授权许可】

CC BY