Global Carbon Budget 2024

Abstract. Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate is critical to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe and synthesize datasets and methodologies to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO2 emissions (EFOS) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land-use change (ELUC) are based on land-use and land-use change data and bookkeeping models. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly, and its growth rate (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The global net uptake of CO2 by the ocean (SOCEAN, called the ocean sink) is estimated with global ocean biogeochemistry models and observation-based fCO2 products (fCO2 is the fugacity of CO2). The global net uptake of CO2 by the land (SLAND, called the land sink) is estimated with dynamic global vegetation models. Additional lines of evidence on land and ocean sinks are provided by atmospheric inversions, atmospheric oxygen measurements, and Earth system models. The sum of all sources and sinks results in the carbon budget imbalance (BIM), a measure of imperfect data and incomplete understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the year 2023, EFOS increased by 1.3 % relative to 2022, with fossil emissions at 10.1 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 (10.3 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 when the cement carbonation sink is not included), and ELUC was 1.0 ± 0.7 GtC yr−1, for a total anthropogenic CO2 emission (including the cement carbonation sink) of 11.1 ± 0.9 GtC yr−1 (40.6 ± 3.2 GtCO2 yr−1). Also, for 2023, GATM was 5.9 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1 (2.79 ± 0.1 ppm yr−1; ppm denotes parts per million), SOCEAN was 2.9 ± 0.4 GtC yr−1, and SLAND was 2.3 ± 1.0 GtC yr−1, with a near-zero BIM (−0.02 GtC yr−1). The global atmospheric CO2 concentration averaged over 2023 reached 419.31 ± 0.1 ppm. Preliminary data for 2024 suggest an increase in EFOS relative to 2023 of +0.8 % (−0.2 % to 1.7 %) globally and an atmospheric CO2 concentration increase by 2.87 ppm, reaching 422.45 ppm, 52 % above the pre-industrial level (around 278 ppm in 1750). Overall, the mean of and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2023, with a near-zero overall budget imbalance, although discrepancies of up to around 1 GtC yr−1 persist for the representation of annual to semi-decadal variability in CO2 fluxes. Comparison of estimates from multiple approaches and observations shows the following: (1) a persistent large uncertainty in the estimate of land-use change emissions, (2) low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO2 flux in the northern extra-tropics, and (3) a discrepancy between the different methods on the mean ocean sink. This living-data update documents changes in methods and datasets applied to this most recent global carbon budget as well as evolving community understanding of the global carbon cycle. The data presented in this work are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/GCP-2024 (Friedlingstein et al., 2024).

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Publication Details

Journal
Earth system science data
Published
2025-03-14
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-965-2025
Citations
382
Primary Topic
Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
422.24

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article

Global Carbon Budget 2024

Xu Yue, Frédéric Chevallier, Carla F. Berghoff, Maria Carolina Duran Rojas et al.
382 citations
Earth system science data
Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
422.24
article

Global Carbon Budget 2024

Xu Yue, Frédéric Chevallier, Carla F. Berghoff, Maria Carolina Duran Rojas, Tobias Nützel, Tereza Jarníková, Amanda R. Fay, Pierre Friedlingstein, Thanos Gkritzalis, Nathalie Lefèvre, Naveen Chandra, Are Olsen, A. R. Jacobson, Nicolas Mayot, Hiroyuki Tsujino, Adrienne J. Sutton, Giacomo Grassi, Richard A. Feely, Roland Séférian, Paul I. Palmer, Matthew A. Chamberlain, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Ian A. Harris, Alizée Roobaert, Corinne Le Quéré, Reinel Sospedra‐Alfonso, Sönke Zaehle, Jörg Schwinger, Étienne Tourigny, Olivier Torrès, Jiye Zeng, GEORGE C. HURTT, Shin‐Ichiro Nakaoka, Nicolas Gruber, Zhangcai Qin, Yosuke Iida, Laique Djeutchouang, Marion Gehlen, Atul K. Jain, Shintaro Takao, S. M. Smith, Tatiana Ilyina, Patrick McGuire, Glen P. Peters, Nicholas R. Bates, Nicolas Bellouin, Hiroaki Tatebe, Denis Pierrot, Tsuneo Ono, Laure Resplandy, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Jens Heinke, Hongmei Li, Robbie M. Andrew, Jürgen Knauer, Xiaojuan Yang, Nicolas Metzl, Christian Rödenbeck, Tobias Steinhoff, Vivek K. Arora, Julia Pongratz, Josep G. Canadell, Michael O’Sullivan, Patricia Cadule, Francesco Nicola Tubiello, Özgür Gürses, Rik Wanninkhof, Lei Ma, Almut Arneth, Meike Becker, Fei Jiang, Thomas Gasser, Adrianna Foster, Henry C. Bittig, Stephen A. Sitch, Clemens Schwingshackl, Dongxu Yang, Xinyu Dou, Xin Lan, Luke Gregor, Judith Hauck, Matthew W. Jones, Wenping Yuan, Philippe Ciais, Wouter Peters, Kazutaka Enyo, Wiley Evans, Bronte Tilbrook, Robert B. Jackson, Zhu Liu, Matthew Hefner, Ralph F. Keeling, Shamil Maksyutov, Laurent Bopp, Yosuke Niwa, Ning Zeng, Siv K. Lauvset, Simone R. Alin, T. Luke Smallman, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Guido R. van der Werf, Natalie Monacci, Eric J. Morgan, Katie Campbell, Léa Olivier, Etsushi Kato, Thais M. Rosan, Annika Jersild, Louise Chini, Daniel J. Ford, Peter Landschützer, Junjie Liu, Xuhui Wang, Zhen Yu, Hanqin Tian, Qing Sun, Gregg Marland, Craig Neill, Zhe Jin, Thomas Colligan, Jeanne Decayeux
article en
382 citations

Abstract

Abstract. Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate is critical to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe and synthesize datasets and methodologies to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. Fossil CO2 emissions (EFOS) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, while emissions from land-use change (ELUC) are based on land-use and land-use change data and bookkeeping models. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly, and its growth rate (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The global net uptake of CO2 by the ocean (SOCEAN, called the ocean sink) is estimated with global ocean biogeochemistry models and observation-based fCO2 products (fCO2 is the fugacity of CO2). The global net uptake of CO2 by the land (SLAND, called the land sink) is estimated with dynamic global vegetation models. Additional lines of evidence on land and ocean sinks are provided by atmospheric inversions, atmospheric oxygen measurements, and Earth system models. The sum of all sources and sinks results in the carbon budget imbalance (BIM), a measure of imperfect data and incomplete understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the year 2023, EFOS increased by 1.3 % relative to 2022, with fossil emissions at 10.1 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 (10.3 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 when the cement carbonation sink is not included), and ELUC was 1.0 ± 0.7 GtC yr−1, for a total anthropogenic CO2 emission (including the cement carbonation sink) of 11.1 ± 0.9 GtC yr−1 (40.6 ± 3.2 GtCO2 yr−1). Also, for 2023, GATM was 5.9 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1 (2.79 ± 0.1 ppm yr−1; ppm denotes parts per million), SOCEAN was 2.9 ± 0.4 GtC yr−1, and SLAND was 2.3 ± 1.0 GtC yr−1, with a near-zero BIM (−0.02 GtC yr−1). The global atmospheric CO2 concentration averaged over 2023 reached 419.31 ± 0.1 ppm. Preliminary data for 2024 suggest an increase in EFOS relative to 2023 of +0.8 % (−0.2 % to 1.7 %) globally and an atmospheric CO2 concentration increase by 2.87 ppm, reaching 422.45 ppm, 52 % above the pre-industrial level (around 278 ppm in 1750). Overall, the mean of and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2023, with a near-zero overall budget imbalance, although discrepancies of up to around 1 GtC yr−1 persist for the representation of annual to semi-decadal variability in CO2 fluxes. Comparison of estimates from multiple approaches and observations shows the following: (1) a persistent large uncertainty in the estimate of land-use change emissions, (2) low agreement between the different methods on the magnitude of the land CO2 flux in the northern extra-tropics, and (3) a discrepancy between the different methods on the mean ocean sink. This living-data update documents changes in methods and datasets applied to this most recent global carbon budget as well as evolving community understanding of the global carbon cycle. The data presented in this work are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/GCP-2024 (Friedlingstein et al., 2024).

Earth system science dataVol. 17(3)
National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, Tula Foundation, European Space Agency, Flotte Océanographique Française, Meteorological Research Institute, Japan Meteorological Agency, Royal Society, National Centre for Atmospheric Science, European Commission, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Agence Nationale de la Recherche, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, Institut Polaire Français Paul Emile Victor, Norges Forskningsråd, Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan, Helmholtz Association, Sorbonne Université, European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, HORIZON EUROPE Framework Programme, Natural Environment Research Council, European Research Council, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Institut national des sciences de l'Univers, National Key Research and Development Program of China, Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province for Distinguished Young Scholars, Ocean Acidification Program, Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program, Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology, National Centre for Earth Observation
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