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

• Published in: Nature communications 2019-08, Vol.10 (1), p.1-9, Article 3344
• Main Authors: Palmer, Paul I., Feng, Liang, Baker, David, Chevallier, Frédéric, Bösch, Hartmut, Somkuti, Peter
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 704/106/35/824; 704/47/4113; Atmospheric models; Basins; Biosphere; Carbon dioxide; Climate change; Continental interfaces, environment; Ecosystems; Emissions; Environmental changes; Greenhouse effect; Humanities and Social Sciences; Land use; multidisciplinary; Ocean, Atmosphere; Organic carbon; Organic soils; Satellites; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sciences of the Universe; Tropical environments
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11097-w

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 (CO 2 ), interpreted using independent models, are consistent with the land tropics being a net annual carbon emission of ( median minimum maximum ) 1.0 3 - 0.20 + 1.73 and 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 1.4 8 + 0.80 + 1.95 PgC in 2015 and 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 CO 2 record from 2009 onwards. Tropical land ecosystems contain vast carbon reservoirs, but their influence on atmospheric CO 2 is poorly understood. Here the authors use new carbon-observing satellites to reveal a large emission source over northern tropical Africa, where there are large soil carbon stores and substantial land use changes.