The Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research contributes in “The Global Carbon Project”, which provides an annual analysis of global carbon emissions, incorporating data from multiple research institutes from around the world. The new report is published online today in the international journal Earth System Science Data Discussions. It reveals unprecedented CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, but with a slightly lower pace of 2.1% than the average 3.1% since 2000.
- This year’s report also shows that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increased in 2012 at a faster rate than the average over the past 10 years due to a combination of continuing growth in emissions and a decrease in land carbon sinks from a very high level in the previous year, says co-author of the report Abdirahman Omar, who is based at Uni Research and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Norway. In addition, Benjamin Pfeil and Jörg Schwinger have contributed as co-authors in the report. According to athors, the land uptake of CO2 this year has returned to mean level for the last decade.
The yearly reports document the total emissions of CO2, land and ocean sinks and accumulation in the atmosphere, which leads to climate change.
- Nature’s uptake of CO2 is rather stable, but as the world warms it is expected that nature’s ability to absorb CO2 will weaken and a larger part of human made CO2 will lead to stronger influence on the climate, says Are Olsen, who is based at the Centre for Climate Dynamics at the University of Bergen and the Bjerknes Centre.
Coal continues to dominate
In spite of a boom in renewable energy, coal continues to dominate energy development and many of the top country emitters have increased their coal dependency. The 2012 carbon dioxide emissions breakdown is coal (43%), oil (33%), gas (18%), cement (5.3%) and gas flaring (0.6%). The figure below (figure 4 in the report) shows yearly development in CO2 emissions in GtC, in which coal has had the strongest growth. It also indicates that the development in Chinese emissions is a main cause for this strong growth in coal. Chinese emissions grew with 5,9 % in 2012, which constitutes 70 % of the global increase in CO2 emissions. Indian emissions increased 7.7 percent, which makes up for 20 % of the global increase in CO2 emissions. Carbon dioxide emissions in the USA continued their decline with minus 3.7 percent in 2012, which is mainly caused by a transition from coal to gas.
- China’s strong growth in emissions is for a large part due to increased use of coal, and has already reached the same level of emissions per capita as EU with 7 tons CO2 per person. Even though green investments have started to take off in China, it is far from enough to weaken the CO2 emissions growth, says the Director at the Bjerknes Centre Eystein Jansen.
Hope is fading for limiting the warming to two degrees
Cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide from all sources (fossil fuels plus land use change) since 1870 will reach 550 GtC this year.
- A continuation of the emissions growth trends observed since 2000 would place the world on a path to reach 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times in 30 years, based on the mean of IPCC models, says Jansen. He also underlines the importance of getting on with a large-scale transition, away from coal but also other fossil based energy sources.
Publication
Global Carbon Budget 2013 , by C. Le Quéré, G. P. Peters, R. J. Andres, R. M. Andrew, T. Boden, P. Ciais, P. Friedlingstein, R. A. Houghton, G. Marland, R. Moriarty, S. Sitch, P. Tans, A. Arneth, A. Arvanitis, D. C. E. Bakker, L. Bopp, J. G. Canadell, L. P. Chini, S. C. Doney, A. Harper, I. Harris, J. I. House, A. K. Jain, S. D. Jones, E. Kato, R. F. Keeling, K. Klein Goldewijk, A. Körtzinger, C. Koven, N. Lefèvre, A. Omar, T. Ono, G.-H. Park, B. Pfeil, B. Poulter, M. R. Raupach, P. Regnier, C. Rödenbeck, S. Saito, J. Schwinger, J. Segschneider, B. D. Stocker, B. Tilbrook, S. van Heuven, N. Viovy, R. Wanninkhof, A. Wiltshire, S. Zaehle, 2013. Earth System Science Data Discussion.
Resources
Global Carbon Budget, for high-quality figures and additional information:
www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget
Global Carbon Atlas, an online platform for people to explore, visualise and interpret data of global, regional and national emissions: www.globalcarbonatlas.org
Mauna Loa observatory, for atmospheric CO2, which exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time since measurements started in 1958: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/