Published September 24, 2018
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Reconciling global-model estimates and country reporting of anthropogenic forest CO2 sinks

Creators

  • 1. Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Ispra, Italy
  • 2. University of Bristol
  • 3. Natural Resources Canada
  • 4. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
  • 5. CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway
  • 6. Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Bilbao, Spain
  • 7. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
  • 8. Aix-Marseille University
  • 9. International Centre for Water Resources and Global Change (UNESCO), German Federal Institute of Hydrology, Koblenz, Germany
  • 10. Food and Agriculture Organization
  • 11. University of Exeter
  • 12. University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
  • 13. Institute of Applied Energy (IAE), Tokyo, Japan
  • 14. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • 15. Climate and Land Use Alliance, San Francisco, USA
  • 16. Max Planck Society
  • 17. Central Maine Community College
  • 18. Centre national de la recherche scientifique
  • 19. French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission
  • 20. Met Office

Description

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. The model–inventory discrepancy in net land-use carbon emissions mainly results from conceptual differences in estimating anthropogenic forest sinks. A revised disaggregation of global land model results allows greater comparability with inventories.
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