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Title: North America's net terrestrial CO2 exchange with the atmosphere 1990–2009

Journal Article · · Biogeosciences (Online)
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [3];  [1];  [4];  [5];  [3];  [6];  [7];  [1];  [8];  [9]
  1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  2. Pennsylvania State Univ., State College, PA (United States)
  3. Natural Resources Canada, British Columbia (Canada)
  4. Northern Arizona Univ., Flagstaff, AZ (United States)
  5. Unidad Campeche (Mexico)
  6. Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks, AL (United States)
  7. Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States)
  8. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
  9. USDA Forest Service, Saint Paul, MN (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Scientific understanding of the global carbon cycle is required for developing national and international policy to mitigate fossil fuel CO2 emissions by managing terrestrial carbon uptake. Toward that understanding and as a contribution to the REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP) project, this paper provides a synthesis of net land–atmosphere CO2 exchange for North America (Canada, United States, and Mexico) over the period 1990–2009. Only CO2 is considered, not methane or other greenhouse gases. This synthesis is based on results from three different methods: atmospheric inversion, inventory-based methods and terrestrial biosphere modeling. All methods indicate that the North American land surface was a sink for atmospheric CO2, with a net transfer from atmosphere to land. Estimates ranged from -890 to -280 Tg C yr-1, where the mean of atmospheric inversion estimates forms the lower bound of that range (a larger land sink) and the inventory-based estimate using the production approach the upper (a smaller land sink). This relatively large range is due in part to differences in how the approaches represent trade, fire and other disturbances and which ecosystems they include. Integrating across estimates, "best" estimates (i.e., measures of central tendency) are -472 ± 281 Tg C yr-1 based on the mean and standard deviation of the distribution and -360 Tg C yr-1 (with an interquartile range of -496 to -337) based on the median. Considering both the fossil fuel emissions source and the land sink, our analysis shows that North America was, however, a net contributor to the growth of CO2 in the atmosphere in the late 20th and early 21st century. Finally, with North America's mean annual fossil fuel CO2 emissions for the period 1990–2009 equal to 1720 Tg C yr-1 and assuming the estimate of -472 Tg C yr-1 as an approximation of the true terrestrial CO2 sink, the continent's source : sink ratio for this time period was 1720:472, or nearly 4:1.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830; AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1184926
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1185522
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-103144; KP1703030
Journal Information:
Biogeosciences (Online), Vol. 12, Issue 2; ISSN 1726-4189
Publisher:
European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 48 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (19)

Reduced North American terrestrial primary productivity linked to anomalous Arctic warming journal July 2017
CTDAS-Lagrange v1.0: a high-resolution data assimilation system for regional carbon dioxide observations journal January 2018
Forests dominate the interannual variability of the North American carbon sink journal August 2018
The carbon cycle in Mexico: past, present and future of C stocks and fluxes journal January 2016
A comprehensive data-based assessment of forest ecosystem carbon stocks in the US 1907–2012 journal December 2019
Transitional slopes act as hotspots of both soil CO2 emission and CH4 uptake in a temperate forest landscape journal March 2018
CTDAS-Lagrange v1.0: A high-resolution data assimilation system for regional carbon dioxide observations journal December 2017
State of the science in reconciling top‐down and bottom‐up approaches for terrestrial CO 2 budget journal December 2019
Mitigation of ozone damage to the world’s land ecosystems by source sector journal January 2020
Reviews and syntheses: An empirical spatiotemporal description of the global surface-atmosphere carbon fluxes: Opportunities and data limitations text January 2017
The carbon cycle in Mexico: Past, present and future of C stocks and fluxes text January 2016
The terrestrial biosphere as a net source of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere journal March 2016
Determinants of Above-Ground Biomass and Its Spatial Variability in a Temperate Forest Managed for Timber Production journal August 2018
Reviews and syntheses: An empirical spatiotemporal description of the global surface–atmosphere carbon fluxes: opportunities and data limitations journal January 2017
Effects of contemporary land-use and land-cover change on the carbon balance of terrestrial ecosystems in the United States journal March 2018
Enhanced North American carbon uptake associated with El Niño journal June 2019
Detecting drought impact on terrestrial biosphere carbon fluxes over contiguous US with satellite observations journal September 2018
Long-lived atmospheric trace gases measurements in flask samples from three stations in India journal January 2015
Contributions of wildland fire to terrestrial ecosystem carbon dynamics in North America from 1990 to 2012: Fire-Caused Net Ecosystem Carbon Flux journal May 2017

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
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