Trends and drivers of terrestrial sources and sinks of carbon dioxide: an overview of the TRENDY Project

Stephen Sitch, Michael O’Sullivan, Eddy Robertson, Pierre Friedlingstein, Clément Albergel, Peter Anthoni, Almut Arneth, Vivek K. Arora, Ana Bastos, Vladislav Bastrikov, Nicolas Bellouin, Josep G. Canadell, Louise Chini, Philippe Ciais, Stefanie Falk, Ian Harris, George Hurtt, Akihiko Ito, Atul K. Jain, Matthew W. JonesFortunat Joos, Etsushi Kato, Daniel Kennedy, Kees Klein Goldewijk, Erik Kluzek, Jürgen Knauer, Peter J. Lawrence, Danica Lombardozzi, Joe R. Melton, Julia E.M.S. Nabel, Naiqing Pan, Philippe Peylin, Julia Pongratz, Benjamin Poulter, Thais M. Rosan, Qing Sun, Hanqin Tian, Anthony P. Walker, Ulrich Weber, Wenping Yuan, Xu Yue, Sönke Zaehle

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    Abstract

    The terrestrial biosphere plays a major role in the global carbon cycle, and there is a recognized need for regularly updated estimates of land-atmosphere exchange at regional and global scales. An international ensemble of Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs), known as the “Trends and drivers of the regional scale terrestrial sources and sinks of carbon dioxide” (TRENDY) project, quantifies land biophysical exchange processes and biogeochemistry cycles in support of the annual Global Carbon Budget assessments and the REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes, phase 2 project. DGVMs use a common protocol and set of driving data sets. A set of factorial simulations allows attribution of spatio-temporal changes in land surface processes to three primary global change drivers: changes in atmospheric CO2, climate change and variability, and Land Use and Land Cover Changes (LULCC). Here, we describe the TRENDY project, benchmark DGVM performance using remote-sensing and other observational data, and present results for the contemporary period. Simulation results show a large global carbon sink in natural vegetation over 2012–2021, attributed to the CO2 fertilization effect (3.8 ± 0.8 PgC/yr) and climate (−0.58 ± 0.54 PgC/yr). Forests and semi-arid ecosystems contribute approximately equally to the mean and trend in the natural land sink, and semi-arid ecosystems continue to dominate interannual variability. The natural sink is offset by net emissions from LULCC (−1.6 ± 0.5 PgC/yr), with a net land sink of 1.7 ± 0.6 PgC/yr. Despite the largest gross fluxes being in the tropics, the largest net land-atmosphere exchange is simulated in the extratropical regions.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article numbere2024GB008102
    Number of pages25
    JournalGlobal Biogeochemical Cycles
    Volume38
    Issue number7
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jul 2024

    Bibliographical note

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2024. The Author(s).

    Keywords

    • dynamic global vegetation models
    • global carbon budget
    • land carbon cycle
    • RECCAP2
    • TRENDY

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