Global Carbon Budget 2020

The Global Carbon Project (GCP) integrates knowledge of greenhouse gases for human activities and the Earth system. The projects include global budgets for three dominant greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — and complementary efforts in urban, regional, cumulative, and negative emissions.

On an annual basis GCP reports on the global carbon emissions and provides background insights on sources of emissions (fossil CO2-emissions from burning fossil fuels, land use based emissions) and sinks (the biosphere, oceans and the atmosphere.

One of the most illustrative diagrams in the report concerns the anthropogenic perturbation of the global carbon cycle - the emissions caused by human mankind activities: averaging 40 GtCO2/yr in the 2010-2019 decade. This needs to be seen in comparison to the natural carbon cycles: biogenic closed cycle of 44o Gton, and ocean carbon cycle of 330 Gton. Cutting the 34 GtCO2/yr fossil CO2 emissions and the 6 GtCO2/yr land use change as soon as possible are urgently necessary to prevent ongoing accumulation of 19 GtCO2/yr in the atmosphere and 9 GtCO2/yr in oceans.

More information is available at the Global Carbon Project website (various report of previous years, powerpoints and PDF's).

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