Global Carbon Budget Study using Global Carbon Cycle Model

Two man-made carbon emissions, fossil fuel emissions and land use emissions, have been perturbing naturally occurring global carbon cycle. These emitted carbons will eventually be deposited into the atmosphere, the terrestrial biosphere, the soil, and the ocean. In this study, Simple Global Carbon Model (SGCM) was used to simulate global carbon cycle and to estimate global carbon budget. For the model input, fossil fuel emissions and land use emissions were taken from the literature. Unlike fossil fuel use, land use emissions were highly uncertain. Therefore land use emission inputs were adjusted within an uncertainty range suggested in the literature. Simulated atmospheric $CO_2$ concentrations were well fitted to observations with a standard error of 0.06 ppm. Moreover, simulated carbon budgets in the ocean and terrestrial biosphere were shown to be reasonable compared to the literature values, which have considerable uncertainties. Simulation results show that with increasing fossil fuel emissions, the ratios of carbon partitioning to the atmosphere and the terrestrial biosphere have increased from 42% and 24% in the year 1958 to 50% and 30% in the year 2016 respectively, while that to the ocean has decreased from 34% in the year 1958 to 20% in the year 2016. This finding indicates that if the current emission trend continues, the atmospheric carbon partitioning ratio might be continuously increasing and thereby the atmospheric $CO_2$ concentrations might be increasing much faster. Among the total emissions of 399 gigatons of carbon (GtC) from fossil fuel use and land use during the simulation period (between 1960 and 2016), 189 GtC were reallocated to the atmosphere (47%), 107 GtC to the terrestrial biosphere (27%), and 103GtC to the ocean (26%). The net terrestrial biospheric carbon accumulation (terrestrial biospheric allocations minus land use emissions) showed positive 46 GtC. In other words, the terrestrial biosphere has been accumulating carbon, although land use emission has been depleting carbon in the terrestrial biosphere.

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