Global Carbon Budget 2026

Abstract. Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their partitioning among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate is critical to better understand the global carbon cycle, supporting the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe and synthesise 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 and cement production data. Emissions from land-use change (ELUC) are estimated by bookkeeping models based on land-use data. The global atmospheric CO2 growth rate (GATM) is computed from changes in concentration measured at surface stations. The global net uptake of CO2 by the ocean (SOCEAN) is estimated with global ocean biogeochemistry models and observation-based fCO2-products. The global net uptake of CO2 by the land (SLAND) is estimated with dynamic global vegetation models. Additional lines of evidence are provided by atmospheric inversions, atmospheric oxygen measurements, ocean interior observation-based estimates, 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 2025, EFOS increased by 1.2% relative to 2024, with fossil emissions at 10.5 ± 0.5 GtC yr-1 (including the cement carbonation sink, 0.2 GtC yr-1), ELUC was 1.2 ± 0.7 GtC yr-1, for total anthropogenic CO2 emissions of 11.7 ± 0.9 GtC yr-1 (42.8 ± 3.2 GtCO2 yr-1). Also, for 2025, GATM was 4.4 ± 0.2 GtC yr-1 (2.06 ± 0.1 ppm yr-1), 3.6 GtC lower than the record high 2024 growth rate. SOCEAN was 3.2 ± 0.7 GtC yr-1 and SLAND was 3.6 ± 0.9 GtC yr-1, with a small BIM (0.5 GtC yr-1). The global atmospheric CO2 concentration averaged over 2025 reached 425.6 ± 0.1 ppm. Preliminary data for 2026 suggest a decrease in EFOS relative to 2025 of 0.40% (–1.5% to +0.6%) globally, and atmospheric CO2 concentration increasing by 2.2 ppm reaching 427.7 ppm, 54% above the pre-industrial level (around 278 ppm in 1750). Overall, the mean and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2025, with a small positive overall budget imbalance, (0.6 GtC yr-1 averaged over the period 1959–2025), although discrepancies of up to around 1 GtC yr-1 persist for the representation of annual to decadal variability in CO2 fluxes. Comparison of estimates from multiple approaches and observations shows: (1) a persistent large uncertainty in the estimate of land-use change emissions, (2) a low agreement between the different estimates on the magnitude of the land CO2 flux, particularly in the northern extra-tropics, and (3) a discrepancy between the different estimates on the mean ocean sink and its trend. 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-2026 (Friedlingstein et al., 2026b).

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Journal
Earth System Science Data Discussions
Published
2026-11-10
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-895
Primary Topic
Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
Type
preprint
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preprint

Global Carbon Budget 2026

Frédéric Chevallier, Kirsty Harrington, Carla F. Berghoff, Tobias Nützel et al.
Earth System Science Data Discussions
Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
preprint

Global Carbon Budget 2026

Frédéric Chevallier, Kirsty Harrington, Carla F. Berghoff, Tobias Nützel, Tereza Jarníková, Amanda R. Fay, Pierre Friedlingstein, David Martín Belda, Thanos Gkritzalis, Andrew Ronald Friedman, Sarah Berthet, Agneta Fransson, Are S. Olsen, A. R. Jacobson, Giacomo Grassi, Miaki Muramatsu, Margot Cronin, Matthew A. Chamberlain, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Michael P. Erb, Corinne Le Quéré, Vladimir Lapin, GEORGE C. HURTT, Shin‐Ichiro Nakaoka, Nicolas Gruber, Marion Gehlen, Atul Kumar Jain, Tatiana Ilyina, Patrick Charles McGuire, Glen P. Peters, Nicholas Robert Bates, Alice Benoit-Cattin, Nicolas Bellouin, Linus Kamb, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Jens Heinke, Robbie M. Andrew, Jürgen Knauer, Nicolas Metzl, Vivek K. Arora, Julia Pongratz, Josep G. Canadell, Michael O’Sullivan, Özgür Gürses, David R. Munro, Sebastiaan Luyssaert, Lei Ma, Fei Jiang, Thomas Gasser, Adrianna C. Foster, Tim DeVries, Stephen A. Sitch, Clemens Schwingshackl, Enhui Liao, Xin Lan, Luke Gregor, Judith Hauck, Matthew W. Jones, Matt P. Enright, Philippe Ciais, Wouter Peters, Kazutaka Enyo, Wiley Evans, Rajesh Janardanan, Zhu Liu, Eleanor Burke, Jens Daniel Müller, Ralph F. Keeling, Susan E. Curless, Ida Bagus Mandhara Brasika, Filippa Fransner, Laurent Bopp, Siv Kari Lauvset, Simone R. Alin, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Natalie Monacci, Eric J. Morgan, Leon Casse, Léa Olivier, Etsushi Kato, Tobias Friedrich Ehmen, Annika L. Jersild, Louise Parsons Chini, Suman Maity, Taro Kunimitsu, Daniel J. Ford, Peter Landschützer, Junjie Liu, Akihiko Ito, Gregg Marland, Zhe Jin, Craig C. Neill, Simone Le Chevère, Kjetil Aas, Wensu Hao, Kimberly Bedard, Juliette Mignot, Ben Felzer, Woo-Sung Lee, Hongmei Li
preprint en

Abstract

Abstract. Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their partitioning among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate is critical to better understand the global carbon cycle, supporting the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe and synthesise 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 and cement production data. Emissions from land-use change (ELUC) are estimated by bookkeeping models based on land-use data. The global atmospheric CO2 growth rate (GATM) is computed from changes in concentration measured at surface stations. The global net uptake of CO2 by the ocean (SOCEAN) is estimated with global ocean biogeochemistry models and observation-based fCO2-products. The global net uptake of CO2 by the land (SLAND) is estimated with dynamic global vegetation models. Additional lines of evidence are provided by atmospheric inversions, atmospheric oxygen measurements, ocean interior observation-based estimates, 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 2025, EFOS increased by 1.2% relative to 2024, with fossil emissions at 10.5 ± 0.5 GtC yr-1 (including the cement carbonation sink, 0.2 GtC yr-1), ELUC was 1.2 ± 0.7 GtC yr-1, for total anthropogenic CO2 emissions of 11.7 ± 0.9 GtC yr-1 (42.8 ± 3.2 GtCO2 yr-1). Also, for 2025, GATM was 4.4 ± 0.2 GtC yr-1 (2.06 ± 0.1 ppm yr-1), 3.6 GtC lower than the record high 2024 growth rate. SOCEAN was 3.2 ± 0.7 GtC yr-1 and SLAND was 3.6 ± 0.9 GtC yr-1, with a small BIM (0.5 GtC yr-1). The global atmospheric CO2 concentration averaged over 2025 reached 425.6 ± 0.1 ppm. Preliminary data for 2026 suggest a decrease in EFOS relative to 2025 of 0.40% (–1.5% to +0.6%) globally, and atmospheric CO2 concentration increasing by 2.2 ppm reaching 427.7 ppm, 54% above the pre-industrial level (around 278 ppm in 1750). Overall, the mean and trend in the components of the global carbon budget are consistently estimated over the period 1959–2025, with a small positive overall budget imbalance, (0.6 GtC yr-1 averaged over the period 1959–2025), although discrepancies of up to around 1 GtC yr-1 persist for the representation of annual to decadal variability in CO2 fluxes. Comparison of estimates from multiple approaches and observations shows: (1) a persistent large uncertainty in the estimate of land-use change emissions, (2) a low agreement between the different estimates on the magnitude of the land CO2 flux, particularly in the northern extra-tropics, and (3) a discrepancy between the different estimates on the mean ocean sink and its trend. 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-2026 (Friedlingstein et al., 2026b).

Earth System Science Data Discussions
University of Exeter (GB), Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (FR)
Atmospheric and Environmental Gas Dynamics
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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