Reconciling global-model estimates and country reporting of anthropogenic forest CO2 sinks – 2018

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 4 GtCO₂ 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). The authors show that a substantial part of this discrepancy (about 3.2 GtCO₂ 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.

Published in Nature Climate Change, volume 8, pages 914–920 (2018).