Journal Article

Reconciling global-model estimates and country reporting of anthropogenic forest CO2 sinks

Cescatti, Alessandro, Dentener, Frank, Kato, Etsushi, Sitch, Stephen, Alkama, Ramdane, Federici, Sandro, Wiltshire, Andy, Alberte Bondeau, Jain, Atul K, Nassikas, Alexander A, Julia E M S Nabel, House, Jo, Grassi, Giacomo, Sanz, Maria J, Peters, Glen P, Rossi, Simone, Viovy, Nicolas, Fader, Marianela, Raul Abad Viñas, Lee, Donna, Houghton, Richard A, Zaehle, Sönke, Friedlingstein, Pierre, Kurz, Werner A, Perugini, Lucia, Arneth, Almut, Koven, Charles D

2018

Overview

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.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: Anthropogenic factors / Carbon dioxide / Disaggregation / Emission inventories / Environmental changes / Environmental impact / Forests / Greenhouse gases / Human influences / Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change / Inventories / Inventory management / Land use / Mitigation / Paris Agreement / Temperature requirements / Tracking / United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change