Net carbon emissions from African biosphere dominate pan-tropical atmospheric CO2 signal

Paul I. Palmer (), Liang Feng, David Baker, Frédéric Chevallier, Hartmut Bösch and Peter Somkuti
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Paul I. Palmer: University of Edinburgh
Liang Feng: University of Edinburgh
David Baker: Colorado State University
Frédéric Chevallier: Université Paris-Saclay
Hartmut Bösch: University of Leicester
Peter Somkuti: University of Leicester

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Tropical ecosystems are large carbon stores that are vulnerable to climate change. The sparseness of ground-based measurements has precluded verification of these ecosystems being a net annual source (+ve) or sink (−ve) of atmospheric carbon. We show that two independent satellite data sets of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), interpreted using independent models, are consistent with the land tropics being a net annual carbon emission of $$({\mathrm{median}}_{{\mathrm{minimum}}}^{{\mathrm{maximum}}})$$ ( median minimum maximum ) $$1.03_{ - 0.20}^{ + 1.73}$$ 1.0 3 - 0.20 + 1.73 and $$1.60_{ + 1.39}^{ + 2.11}$$ 1.6 0 + 1.39 + 2.11 petagrams (PgC) in 2015 and 2016, respectively. These pan-tropical estimates reflect unexpectedly large net emissions from tropical Africa of $$1.48_{ + 0.80}^{ + 1.95}$$ 1.4 8 + 0.80 + 1.95 PgC in 2015 and $$1.65_{ + 1.14}^{ + 2.42}$$ 1.6 5 + 1.14 + 2.42 PgC in 2016. The largest carbon uptake is over the Congo basin, and the two loci of carbon emissions are over western Ethiopia and western tropical Africa, where there are large soil organic carbon stores and where there has been substantial land use change. These signals are present in the space-borne CO2 record from 2009 onwards.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11097-w

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