Abstract
Abstract. 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°) 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 (1σ 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.
Highlights
Hydrology and Earth System the following component carbon fluxes: net primary produc- Full carbon budgets for land regSiocniseanrecseigsnificant for sevtion (NPP); net ecosystem production (NEP); fire; land use eral reasons: they provide insights into terrestrial carbon cychange (LUC); riverine export; dust export; harvest and fossil fuel emissions
The whole of Australia (CP > 85 %), but less so in the tropics, where variability in temperature strongly influences variability in net primary production (NPP) and NEP; (iii) the cool temperate region suffered from exceptionally low precipitation (CP < 10 %) and NEP (CP < 3 %), as a consequence of preceding decades of below-median NPP (Fig. 6)
Key findings emerging from the construction of the full Australian carbon budget (1990–2011) are listed below
Summary
Hydrology and Earth System the following component carbon fluxes: net primary produc- Full carbon budgets for land regSiocniseanrecseigsnificant for sevtion (NPP); net ecosystem production (NEP); fire; land use eral reasons: they provide insights into terrestrial carbon cychange (LUC); riverine export; dust export; harvest (wood, cle dynamics, including processes contributing to the net crop and livestock) and fossil fuel emissions (both territorial trend and variability in the terrestrial carbon sink; they place and non-territorial). The mean NEP reveals that climate variability and rising CO2 contributed 12 ± 24 (1σ error on mean) and 68 ± 15 TgC yr−1, respectively These gains were in the context a contribution of to tehsetiRmEaCteCs AoSvPeo(rRtlwEidgoiocEneanalturCrtiahersb.oTnhCeywcloerkAsissessment and Processes) project (Canadell et al, 2011), as 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 %
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