Global Carbon Budget 2021

The "Balance Sheet" for the Global Carbon Budget

The 2021 global carbon budget[1] is out and is undergoing peer review. The budget contains emission estimates for 2020 and preliminary estimates for 2021. I’m reporting these in GtC; to convert these figures to GtCO2, you can multiply these numbers by 3.67. In 2020, fossil fuel and industry emissions totaled 9.5 GtC and land use change totaled 0.88 GtC. In 2021, preliminary estimates are that fossil fuel and industry emissions totaled 9.92 GtC while land use change totaled 0.8 GtC. In terms of cumulative emissions, this means that from 1750, anthropogenic emissions have totaled 691 GtC through 2020 and about 702 GtC through 2021.

Meanwhile, CO2 concentrations have increased from about 277.6 ppm in 1750 to 414.24 ppm in 2020 and 416.45 ppm in 2021.[2] That’s a 49% increase in CO2 concentrations. If we convert the 136.6 ppm increase from 1750 to 2020, that means that there is 291 GtC more carbon in the atmosphere now than there was in 1750.



From the estimates in the paper, about 42% of our emissions remain in the atmosphere (the rest gets taken up by land and oceans). So of the 691 GtC we emitted from 1750 to 2020, about 290 GtC is still in the atmosphere. In other words, virtually all the increase in CO2 concentrations is due to human emissions. The paper resolved the total carbon budget to ~10 GtC from 1750-2020.

The global carbon budget 2021 report, with analysis of uncertainties in these estimates, can be found here.[3] There is a lot more information here than what I’m reporting above. It’s extremely fascinating for those interested in empirical data.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Marketing of Alt-Data at Temperature.Global

Image
Temperature.Global (12-month running average, sort of) A few years ago, I started seeing people post links to a new dataset for global temperatures at a website called temperature.global. There are at least four unique features of this dataset. First, the website claims to update global temperature in near real time. Second, every year in the dataset averages below "normal." Third, there is absolutely no transparency regarding their methodology (those who administer it are anonymous, most of the data is hidden, and much of their methodology is unclear). And fourth, what is disclosed about their methodology reveals that what they are calculating is not the Earth's surface temperature. Description of Temperature.Global If you go to the temperature.global website, it becomes almost immediately apparent that this website has little concern for transparency. The website is hosted by Parler (the alternative social network), which if nothing else is pretty odd. There are no name...
Read more

Roy Spencer on Models and Observations

Image
A few days ago, Dr. Roy Spencer wrote a piece for the Heritage Foundation called, " Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models " ( PDF ) essentially arguing that models show too much warming compared to observations, and if we stick to observations, "global warming offers no justification for carbon-based regulation." He claims to frame his argument in terms of answering three questions: Is recent warming of the climate system materially attributable to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, as is usually claimed? Is the rate of observed warming close to what computer climate models—used to guide public policy—show? Has the observed rate of warming been sufficient to justify alarm and extensive regulation of CO2 emissions? We should keep in mind that this is a political document intended to support the political aims of the Heritage Foundation, and Spencer has carefully selected what he says and doesn't say to fit the political agenda of the Heritage Found...
Read more

Patrick Frank Publishes on Errors Again

Image
Recently I came across yet another paper by Patrick Frank[1] attempting to claim that climate scientists have been underestimating uncertainties in climate-related data. In this paper, he takes aim at GMST data, and he argues that  LiG resolution limits, non-linearity, and sensor field calibrations yield GSATA mean ±2σ RMS uncertainties of, 1900–1945, ±1.7 °C; 1946–1980, ±2.1 °C; 1981–2004, ±2.0 °C; and 2005–2010, ±1.6 °C. Finally, the 20th century (1900–1999) GSATA, 0.74 ± 1.94 °C, does not convey any information about rate or magnitude of temperature change. The resulting GMST graph from his calculations is below. Essentially, he's saying that errors associated with liquid in glass thermometers are so large that we can have no confidence in the global warming trend in the major GMST datasets. Of course, the organizations producing these GMST datasets all evaluate the uncertainties associated with their anomaly values, and their estimates are invariably much smaller - about ±0.05°...
Read more