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Current estimates of the terrestrial carbon fluxes in Asia show large uncertainties particularly in the boreal and mid-latitudes and in China. In this paper, we present an updated carbon flux estimate for Asia (\"Asia\" refers to lands as far west as the Urals and is divided into boreal Eurasia, temperate Eurasia and tropical Asia based on TransCom regions) by introducing aircraft CO2 measurements from the CONTRAIL (Comprehensive Observation Network for Trace gases by Airline) program into an inversion modeling system based on the CarbonTracker framework. We estimated the averaged annual total Asian terrestrial land CO2 sink was about -1.56 Pg C yr-1 over the period 2006–2010, which offsets about one-third of the fossil fuel emission from Asia (+4.15 Pg C yr-1). The uncertainty of the terrestrial uptake estimate was derived from a set of sensitivity tests and ranged from -1.07 to -1.80 Pg C yr-1, comparable to the formal Gaussian error of ±1.18 Pg C yr-1 (1-sigma). The largest sink was found in forests, predominantly in coniferous forests (-0.64 ± 0.70 Pg C yr-1) and mixed forests (-0.14 ± 0.27 Pg C yr-1); and the second and third large carbon sinks were found in grass/shrub lands and croplands, accounting for -0.44 ± 0.48 Pg C yr-1 and -0.20 ± 0.48 Pg C yr-1, respectively. The carbon fluxes per ecosystem type have large a priori Gaussian uncertainties, and the reduction of uncertainty based on assimilation of sparse observations over Asia is modest (8.7–25.5%) for most individual ecosystems. The ecosystem flux adjustments follow the detailed a priori spatial patterns by design, which further increases the reliance on the a priori biosphere exchange model. The peak-to-peak amplitude of inter-annual variability (IAV) was 0.57 Pg C yr-1 ranging from -1.71 Pg C yr-1 to -2.28 Pg C yr-1. The IAV analysis reveals that the Asian CO2 sink was sensitive to climate variations, with the lowest uptake in 2010 concurrent with a summer flood and autumn drought and the largest CO2 sink in 2009 owing to favorable temperature and plentiful precipitation conditions. We also found the inclusion of the CONTRAIL data in the inversion modeling system reduced the uncertainty by 11% over the whole Asian region, with a large reduction in the southeast of boreal Eurasia, southeast of temperate Eurasia and most tropical Asian areas.

We present an enhanced version of the SiBCASA terrestrial biosphere model that is extended with (a) biomass burning emissions from the SiBCASA carbon pools using remotely sensed burned area from the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED), (b) an isotopic discrimination scheme that calculates 13C signatures of photosynthesis and autotrophic respiration, and (c) a separate set of 13C pools to carry isotope ratios into heterotrophic respiration. We quantify in this study the terrestrial exchange of CO2 and 13CO2 as a function of environmental changes in humidity and biomass burning. The implementation of biomass burning yields similar fluxes as CASA-GFED both in magnitude and spatial patterns. The implementation of isotope exchange gives a global mean discrimination value of 15.2‰, ranges between 4 and 20‰ depending on the photosynthetic pathway in the plant, and compares favorably (annually and seasonally) with other published values. Similarly, the isotopic disequilibrium is similar to other studies that include a small effect of biomass burning as it shortens the turnover of carbon. In comparison to measurements, a newly modified starch/sugar storage pool propagates the isotopic discrimination anomalies to respiration much better. In addition, the amplitude of the drought response by SiBCASA is lower than suggested by the measured isotope ratios. We show that a slight increase in the stomatal closure for large vapor pressure deficit would amplify the respired isotope ratio variability. Our study highlights the importance of isotope ratio observations of 13C to assess and improve biochemical models like SiBCASA, especially with regard to the allocation and turnover of carbon and the responses to drought.