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

Grassi, Giacomo; House, Jo; Kurz, Werner A.; Cescatti, Alessandro; Houghton, Richard A.; Peters, Glen P.; Sanz, Maria J.; Vinas, Raul Abad; Alkama, Ramdane; Arneth, Almut; Bondeau, Alberte; Dentener, Frank; Fader, Marianela; Federici, Sandro; Friedlingstei

NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE
2018
VL / 8 - BP / 914 - EP / +
abstract
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 4GtCO(2) 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 GtCO(2) 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.

AccesS level

Green accepted

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