Quantifying differences in land use emission estimates implied by definition discrepancies (original) (raw)

Short communication

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27 Nov 2015

Short communication | | 27 Nov 2015

Abstract. The quantification of CO2 emissions from anthropogenic land use and land use change (_e_LUC) is essential to understand the drivers of the atmospheric CO2 increase and to inform climate change mitigation policy. Reported values in synthesis reports are commonly derived from different approaches (observation-driven bookkeeping and process-modelling) but recent work has emphasized that inconsistencies between methods may imply substantial differences in _e_LUC estimates. However, a consistent quantification is lacking and no concise modelling protocol for the separation of primary and secondary components of _e_LUC has been established. Here, we review differences of _e_LUC quantification methods and apply an Earth System Model (ESM) of Intermediate Complexity to quantify them. We find that the magnitude of effects due to merely conceptual differences between ESM and offline vegetation model-based quantifications is ~ 20 % for today. Under a future business-as-usual scenario, differences tend to increase further due to slowing land conversion rates and an increasing impact of altered environmental conditions on land-atmosphere fluxes. We establish how coupled Earth System Models may be applied to separate secondary component fluxes of _e_LUC arising from the replacement of potential C sinks/sources and the land use feedback and show that secondary fluxes derived from offline vegetation models are conceptually and quantitatively not identical to either, nor their sum. Therefore, we argue that synthesis studies should resort to the "least common denominator" of different methods, following the bookkeeping approach where only primary land use emissions are quantified under the assumption of constant environmental boundary conditions.

Received: 05 Mar 2015

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Discussion started: 19 Mar 2015

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Revised: 04 Nov 2015

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Accepted: 10 Nov 2015

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Published: 27 Nov 2015