The terrestrial carbon budget of South and Southeast Asia

Cervarich, Matthew; Shu, Shijie; Jain, Atul K.; Arneth, Almut; Canadell, Josep; Friedlingstein, Pierre; Houghton, Richard A.; Kato, Etsushi; Koven, Charles; Patra, Prabir; Poulter, Ben; Sitch, Stephen; Stocker, Beni; Viovy, Nicolas; Wiltshire, Andy; Zeng, Ning

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/105006

Title: The terrestrial carbon budget of South and Southeast Asia

Journal Article · Wed Oct 19 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Environmental Research Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/105006· OSTI ID:1471025

Cervarich, Matthew ^[1]; Shu, Shijie ^[1]; Jain, Atul K. ^[1]; Arneth, Almut ^[2]; Canadell, Josep ^[3]; Friedlingstein, Pierre ^[4]; Houghton, Richard A. ^[5];

^[6]; Koven, Charles ^[7]; Patra, Prabir ^[8]; Poulter, Ben ^[9]; Sitch, Stephen ^[4]; Stocker, Beni ^[10]; Viovy, Nicolas ^[11]; Wiltshire, Andy ^[12]; Zeng, Ning ^[13]

Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL (United States)
Karlsruhe Inst. of Technology (KIT) (Germany)
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Canberroa, ACT (Australia)
Univ. of Exeter (United Kingdom)
Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA (United States)
Inst. of Applied Energy, Tokyo (Japan)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
JAMSTEC, Yokohama (Japan)
Montana State Univ., Bozeman, MT (United States)
Imperial College, Ascot (United Kingdom)
Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Saclay (France)
Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter (United Kingdom)
Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)

Accomplishing the objective of the current climate policies will require establishing carbon budget and flux estimates in each region and county of the globe by comparing and reconciling multiple estimates including the observations and the results of top-down atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) inversions and bottom-up dynamic global vegetation models. With this in view, this study synthesizes the carbon source/sink due to net ecosystem productivity (NEP), land cover land use change (E_LUC), fires and fossil burning (E_FIRE) for the South Asia (SA), Southeast Asia (SEA) and South and Southeast Asia (SSEA = SA + SEA) and each country in these regions using the multiple top-down and bottom-up modeling results. The terrestrial net biome productivity (NBP=NEP - E_LUC - E_FIRE) calculated based on bottom-up models in combination with E_FIRE based on GFED4s data show net carbon sinks of 217 ± 147, 10 ± 55, and 227 ± 279 TgC yr^-1 for SA, SEA, and SSEA. The top-down models estimated NBP net carbon sinks were 20 ± 170, 4 ± 90 and 24 ± 180 TgC yr^-1. In comparison, regional emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels were 495, 275, and 770 TgC yr^-1, which are many times higher than the NBP sink estimates, suggesting that the contribution of the fossil fuel emissions to the carbon budget of SSEA results in a significant net carbon source during the 2000s. When considering both NBP and fossil fuel emissions for the individual countries within the regions, Bhutan and Laos were net carbon sinks and rest of the countries were net carbon source during the 2000s. The relative contributions of each of the fluxes (NBP, NEP, E_LUC, and E_FIRE, fossil fuel emissions) to a nation’s net carbon flux varied greatly from country to country, suggesting a heterogeneous dominant carbon fluxes on the country-level throughout SSEA.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1471025

Journal Information:: Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 11, Issue 10; ISSN 1748-9326

Publisher:: IOP PublishingCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 28 works

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