Appendix A lists example of Earth observation applications in World Bank projects. Appendix B lists and briefly describes a selective selection of water information systems that prove notable examples of the integration of ground observations, EO data, and models.

Author(s): Haverd, V; Raupach, MR; Briggs, PR; Canadell, JG; Davis, SJ; Law, RM; Meyer, CP; Peters, GP; Pickett-Heaps, C; Sherman, B

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe data sets and a methodology to quantify all major components of the global carbon budget, including their uncertainties, based on the combination of a range of data, algorithms, statistics, and model estimates and their interpretation by a broad scientific community. We discuss changes compared to previous estimates, consistency within and among components, alongside methodology and data limitations. CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production (EFF) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, respectively, while emissions from land-use change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on combined evidence from land-cover-change data, fire activity associated with deforestation, and models. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The mean ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) is based on observations from the 1990s, while the annual anomalies and trends are estimated with ocean models. The variability in SOCEAN is evaluated with data products based on surveys of ocean CO2 measurements. The global residual terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) is estimated by the difference of the other terms of the global carbon budget and compared to results of independent dynamic global vegetation models forced by observed climate, CO2, and land-cover-change (some including nitrogen–carbon interactions). We compare the mean land and ocean fluxes and their variability to estimates from three atmospheric inverse methods for three broad latitude bands. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ, reflecting the current capacity to characterise the annual estimates of each component of the global carbon budget. For the last decade available (2004–2013), EFF was 8.9 ± 0.4 GtC yr−1, ELUC 0.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, GATM 4.3 ± 0.1 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN 2.6 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, and SLAND 2.9 ± 0.8 GtC yr−1. For year 2013 alone, EFF grew to 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, 2.3% above 2012, continuing the growth trend in these emissions, ELUC was 0.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, GATM was 5.4 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN was 2.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, and SLAND was 2.5 ± 0.9 GtC yr−1. GATM was high in 2013, reflecting a steady increase in EFF and smaller and opposite changes between SOCEAN and SLAND compared to the past decade (2004–2013). The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 395.31 ± 0.10 ppm averaged over 2013. We estimate that EFF will increase by 2.5% (1.3–3.5%) to 10.1 ± 0.6 GtC in 2014 (37.0 ± 2.2 GtCO2 yr−1), 65% above emissions in 1990, based on projections of world gross domestic product and recent changes in the carbon intensity of the global economy. From this projection of EFF and assumed constant ELUC for 2014, cumulative emissions of CO2 will reach about 545 ± 55 GtC (2000 ± 200 GtCO2) for 1870–2014, about 75% from EFF and 25% from ELUC. This paper documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new carbon budget compared with previous publications of this living data set (Le Quéré et al., 2013, 2014). All observations presented here can be downloaded from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (doi:10.3334/CDIAC/GCP_2014).

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe data sets and a methodology to quantify all major components of the global carbon budget, including their uncertainties, based on the combination of a range of data, algorithms, statistics and model estimates and their interpretation by a broad scientific community. We discuss changes compared to previous estimates, consistency within and among components, alongside methodology and data limitations. CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel combustion and cement production (EFF) are based on energy statistics, while emissions from land-use change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on combined evidence from land-cover change data, fire activity associated with deforestation, and models. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The mean ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) is based on observations from the 1990s, while the annual anomalies and trends are estimated with ocean models. The variability in SOCEAN is evaluated for the first time in this budget with data products based on surveys of ocean CO2 measurements. The global residual terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) is estimated by the difference of the other terms of the global carbon budget and compared to results of independent dynamic global vegetation models forced by observed climate, CO2 and land cover change (some including nitrogen–carbon interactions). All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ, reflecting the current capacity to characterise the annual estimates of each component of the global carbon budget. For the last decade available (2003–2012), EFF was 8.6 ± 0.4 GtC yr−1, ELUC 0.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, GATM 4.3 ± 0.1 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN 2.5 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, and SLAND 2.8 ± 0.8 GtC yr−1. For year 2012 alone, EFF grew to 9.7 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, 2.2% above 2011, reflecting a continued growing trend in these emissions, GATM was 5.1 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN was 2.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, and assuming an ELUC of 1.0 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 (based on the 2001–2010 average), SLAND was 2.7 ± 0.9 GtC yr−1. GATM was high in 2012 compared to the 2003–2012 average, almost entirely reflecting the high EFF. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 392.52 ± 0.10 ppm averaged over 2012. We estimate that EFF will increase by 2.1% (1.1–3.1%) to 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC in 2013, 61% above emissions in 1990, based on projections of world gross domestic product and recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy. With this projection, cumulative emissions of CO2 will reach about 535 ± 55 GtC for 1870–2013, about 70% from EFF (390 ± 20 GtC) and 30% from ELUC (145 ± 50 GtC). This paper also documents any changes in the methods and data sets used in this new carbon budget from previous budgets (Le Quéré et al., 2013). All observations presented here can be downloaded from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (doi:10.3334/CDIAC/GCP_2013_V2.3).

In order to limit climate warming, CO2 emissions must remain below fixed quota. An evaluation of past emissions suggests that at 2014 emissions rates, the total quota will probably be exhausted within the next 30 years. Efforts to limit climate change below a given temperature level require that global emissions of CO2 cumulated over time remain below a limited quota. This quota varies depending on the temperature level, the desired probability of staying below this level and the contributions of other gases. In spite of this restriction, global emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and cement production have continued to grow by 2.5% per year on average over the past decade. Two thirds of the CO2 emission quota consistent with a 2 °C temperature limit has already been used, and the total quota will likely be exhausted in a further 30 years at the 2014 emissions rates. We show that CO2 emissions track the high end of the latest generation of emissions scenarios, due to lower than anticipated carbon intensity improvements of emerging economies and higher global gross domestic product growth. In the absence of more stringent mitigation, these trends are set to continue and further reduce the remaining quota until the onset of a potential new climate agreement in 2020. Breaking current emission trends in the short term is key to retaining credible climate targets within a rapidly diminishing emission quota.

Through 1959–2012, an airborne fraction (AF) of 0.44 of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions remained in the atmosphere, with the rest being taken up by land and ocean CO2 sinks. Understanding of this uptake is critical because it greatly alleviates the emissions reductions required for climate mitigation, and also reduces the risks and damages that adaptation has to embrace. An observable quantity that reflects sink properties more directly than the AF is the CO2 sink rate (kS), the combined land–ocean CO2 sink flux per unit excess atmospheric CO2 above preindustrial levels. Here we show from observations that kS declined over 1959–2012 by a factor of about 1 / 3, implying that CO2 sinks increased more slowly than excess CO2. Using a carbon–climate model, we attribute the decline in kS to four mechanisms: slower-than-exponential CO2 emissions growth (~ 35% of the trend), volcanic eruptions (~ 25%), sink responses to climate change (~ 20%), and nonlinear responses to increasing CO2, mainly oceanic (~ 20%). The first of these mechanisms is associated purely with the trajectory of extrinsic forcing, and the last two with intrinsic, feedback responses of sink processes to changes in climate and atmospheric CO2. Our results suggest that the effects of these intrinsic, nonlinear responses are already detectable in the global carbon cycle. Although continuing future decreases in kS will occur under all plausible CO2 emission scenarios, the rate of decline varies between scenarios in non-intuitive ways because extrinsic and intrinsic mechanisms respond in opposite ways to changes in emissions: extrinsic mechanisms cause kS to decline more strongly with increasing mitigation, while intrinsic mechanisms cause kS to decline more strongly under high-emission, low-mitigation scenarios as the carbon–climate system is perturbed further from a near-linear regime.

This paper reports a study of the full carbon (C-CO2) budget of the Australian continent, focussing on 1990-2011 in the context of estimates over two centuries. The work is a contribution to the RECCAP (REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes) project, as one of numerous regional studies. In constructing the budget, we estimate the following component carbon fluxes: net primary production (NPP); net ecosystem production (NEP); fire; land use change (LUC); riverine export; dust export; harvest (wood, crop and livestock) and fossil fuel emissions (both territorial and non-territorial).Major biospheric fluxes were derived using BIOS2 (Haverd et al., 2012), a fine-spatial-resolution (0.05 degrees) offline modelling environment in which predictions of CABLE (Wang et al., 2011), a sophisticated land surface model with carbon cycle, are constrained by multiple observation types.The mean NEP reveals that climate variability and rising CO2 contributed 12 +/- 24 (1 sigma error on mean) and 68 +/- 15 TgC yr(-1), respectively. However these gains were partially offset by fire and LUC (along with other minor fluxes), which caused net losses of 26 +/- 4 TgC yr(-1) and 18 +/- 7 TgC yr(-1), respectively. The resultant net biome production (NBP) is 36 +/- 29 TgC yr(-1), in which the largest contributions to uncertainty are NEP, fire and LUC. This NBP offset fossil fuel emissions (95 +/- 6 TgC yr(-1)) by 38 +/- 30 %. The interannual variability (IAV) in the Australian carbon budget exceeds Australia's total carbon emissions by fossil fuel combustion and is dominated by IAV in NEP. Territorial fossil fuel emissions are significantly smaller than the rapidly growing fossil fuel exports: in 2009-2010, Australia exported 2.5 times more carbon in fossil fuels than it emitted by burning fossil fuels.

To assess both past and future responses of the coupled terrestrial water and carbon cycles to climate change and variability, it is important to characterise the sensitivities of water and carbon fluxes and stores to long-term changes in drivers such as precipitation (P), temperature (T) and CO2 concentration. Here we quantify observed sensitivities using a well-calibrated terrestrial biosphere model and data for the Australian continent, and thereby infer likely changes to the water and carbon cycles under specified scenarios for future changes in the drivers. We find: (1) evapotranspiration (ET) has a large positive sensitivity to P. a positive sensitivity to T, and a negative sensitivity to CO2 through increased plant water use efficiency with rising CO2. Consequently, likely changes in T and CO2 over the next half century will have opposite and nearly cancelling effects on ET. (2) Runoff has a large sensitivity to P (positive) and significant sensitivities to T (negative) and CO2 (positive). These sensitivities are largest in cool temperate regions, where major contributors to likely long-term changes in runoff are decreased P (where a 5% rainfall reduction would lead to a 12% decrease in runoff), increased T (with a warming of 1.5 K leading to an additional 6% decrease in runoff), and response to CO2 (with an increase of 100 ppm causing an offsetting 6% increase in runoff). (3) Sensitivities of soil moisture to P, T and CO2 have similar signs and spatial patterns to those for runoff, but are smaller in magnitude by a factor of 5-10. (4) In the terrestrial carbon cycle, net ecosystem production (NEP) is increased by rising CO2 but simultaneously reduced (and nearly cancelled in likely scenarios) by warming. (C) 2013. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Accurate assessments of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the climate policy process, and project future climate change. Present-day analysis requires the combination of a range of data, algorithms, statistics and model estimates and their interpretation by a broad scientific community. Here we describe datasets and a methodology developed by the global carbon cycle science community to quantify all major components of the global carbon budget, including their uncertainties. We discuss changes compared to previous estimates, consistency within and among components, and methodology and data limitations. CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production (E-FF) are based on energy statistics, while emissions from Land-Use Change (E-LUC), including deforestation, are based on combined evidence from land cover change data, fire activity in regions undergoing deforestation, and models. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (G(ATM)) is computed from the concentration. The mean ocean CO2 sink (S-OCEAN) is based on observations from the 1990s, while the annual anomalies and trends are estimated with ocean models. Finally, the global residual terrestrial CO2 sink (S-LAND) is estimated by the difference of the other terms. For the last decade available (2002-2011), E-FF was 8.3 +/- 0.4 PgCyr(-1), E-LUC 1.0 +/- 0.5 PgC yr(-1), GATM 4.3 +/- 0.1 PgC yr(-1), S-OCEAN 2.5 +/- 0.5 PgC yr(-1), and S-LAND 2.6 +/- 0.8 PgC yr(-1). For year 2011 alone, E-FF was 9.5 +/- 0.5 PgC yr(-1), 3.0 percent above 2010, reflecting a continued trend in these emissions; E-LUC was 0.9 +/- 0.5 PgC yr(-1), approximately constant throughout the decade; G(ATM) was 3.6 +/- 0.2 PgC yr(-1), S-OCEAN was 2.7 +/- 0.5 PgC yr(-1), and S-LAND was 4.1 +/- 0.9 PgC yr(-1). G(ATM) was low in 2011 compared to the 2002-2011 average because of a high uptake by the land probably in response to natural climate variability associated to La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 391.31 +/- 0.13 ppm at the end of year 2011. We estimate that E-FF will have increased by 2.6% (1.9-3.5 %) in 2012 based on projections of gross world product and recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy. All uncertainties are reported as +/- 1 sigma (68% confidence assuming Gaussian error distributions that the real value lies within the given interval), reflecting the current capacity to characterise the annual estimates of each component of the global carbon budget. This paper is intended to provide a baseline to keep track of annual carbon budgets in the future.All data presented here can be downloaded from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (doi:10.3334/CDIAC/GCP_V2013).

Information about the carbon cycle potentially constrains the water cycle, and vice versa. This paper explores the utility of multiple observation sets to constrain a land surface model of Australian terrestrial carbon and water cycles, and the resulting mean carbon pools and fluxes, as well as their temporal and spatial variability. Observations include streamflow from 416 gauged catchments, measurements of evapotranspiration (ET) and net ecosystem production (NEP) from 12 eddy-flux sites, litterfall data, and data on carbon pools. By projecting residuals between observations and corresponding predictions onto uncertainty in model predictions at the continental scale, we find that eddy flux measurements provide a significantly tighter constraint on continental net primary production (NPP) than the other data types. Nonetheless, simultaneous constraint by multiple data types is important for mitigating bias from any single type. Four significant results emerging from the multiply-constrained model are that, for the 1990-2011 period: (i) on the Australian continent, a predominantly semi-arid region, over half the water loss through ET (0.64+/-0.05) occurs through soil evaporation and bypasses plants entirely; (ii) mean Australian NPP is quantified at 2.2+/-0.4 (1 sigma) Pg C yr(-1); (iii) annually cyclic ("grassy") vegetation and persistent ("woody") vegetation account for 0.67+/-0.14 and 0.33+/-0.14, respectively, of NPP across Australia; (iv) the average interannual variability of Australia's NEP (+/-0.18 Pg C yr(-1), 1 sigma) is larger than Australia's total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2011 (0.149 Pg C equivalent yr(-1)), and is dominated by variability in desert and savanna regions.