New paper shows nature absorbs ~83% of man-made CO2 emissions, much more than previously thought

A paper published today in Earth System Science Data Discussions analyzes the 2014 carbon budget and predicts man-made CO2 emissions from fossil-fuels and cement production have increased by 65% since 1990. However, atmospheric levels of CO2 have only increased by 11% since 1990, indicating that ~83% of man-made emissions have been absorbed by natural sinks, far greater than the IPCC belief that natural sinks absorb 50% of man-made emissions. 

Thus, natural sinks [such as the up to 30% greening of the planet over the past few decades] are expanding faster than the IPCC anticipated, CO2 lifetime in the atmosphere is much less than the IPCC believes, or the source of the increase is primarily natural due to ocean outgassing, or some combination of the three. 

Thus, the IPCC assumptions about greenhouse "pathways" and "warming in the pipeline" are exaggerated, erroneous, and overheated. 

Further, the 65% increase in CO2 emissions was only associated with 0.2C warming since 1990. If we make the false assumption that 100% of the warming since 1990 was due to man-made CO2 emissions, we can calculate the climate sensitivity to man-made emissions as

~0.2C = x*ln(1.65), where x = 0.399 [13 times less than the 5.35 fudge factor (x) the IPCC uses]

Thus a doubling of man-made emissions [as opposed to net atmospheric levels] of CO2, assuming all warming is due to man-made CO2 emissions, would produce a temperature rise of only 0.28C, in line with several other observational estimates of low climate sensitivity to CO2 levels:

0.399*ln(2) = .28C

Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., 7, 521-610, 2014 www.earth-syst-sci-data-discuss.net/7/521/2014/ doi:10.5194/essdd-7-521-2014 Global carbon budget 2014

C. Le Quéré¹, R. Moriarty¹, R. M. Andrew², G. P. Peters², P. Ciais³, P. Friedlingstein⁴, S. D. Jones¹, S. Sitch⁵, P. Tans⁶, A. Arneth⁷, T. A. Boden⁸, L. Bopp³, Y. Bozec^9,10, J. G. Canadell¹¹, F. Chevallier³, C. E. Cosca¹², I. Harris¹³, M. Hoppema¹⁴, R. A. Houghton¹⁵, J. I. House¹⁶, A. Jain¹⁷, T. Johannessen^18,19, E. Kato²⁰, R. F. Keeling²¹, V. Kitidis²², K. Klein Goldewijk²³, C. Koven²⁴, C. S. Landa^18,19, P. Landschützer²⁵, A. Lenton²⁶, I. D. Lima²⁷, G. Marland²⁸, J. T. Mathis¹², N. Metzl²⁹, Y. Nojiri²⁰, A. Olsen^18,19, T. Ono³⁰, W. Peters³¹, B. Pfeil^18,19, B. Poulter³², M. R. Raupach³³, P. Regnier³⁴, C. Rödenbeck³⁵, S. Saito³⁶, J. E. Salisbury³⁷, U. Schuster⁵, J. Schwinger^18,19, R. Séférian³⁸, J. Segschneider³⁹, T. Steinhoff⁴⁰, B. D. Stocker⁴¹, A. J. Sutton^12,42, T. Takahashi⁴³, B. Tilbrook⁴⁴, G. R. van der Werf⁴⁵, N. Viovy³, Y.-P. Wang⁴⁶, R. Wanninkhof⁴⁷, A. Wiltshire⁴⁸, and N. Zeng⁴⁹

Abstract. Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe datasets and a methodology to quantify all major components of the global carbon budget, including their uncertainties, based on the combination of a range of data, algorithms, statistics and model estimates and their interpretation by a broad scientific community. We discuss changes compared to previous estimates, consistency within and among components, alongside methodology and data limitations. CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production (E_FF) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, respectively, while emissions from Land-Use Change (E_LUC), mainly deforestation, are based on combined evidence from land-cover change data, fire activity associated with deforestation, and models. The global atmospheric CO₂ concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (G_ATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The mean ocean CO₂ sink (S_OCEAN) is based on observations from the 1990s, while the annual anomalies and trends are estimated with ocean models. The variability in S_OCEAN is evaluated with data products based on surveys of ocean CO₂ measurements. The global residual terrestrial CO₂ sink (S_LAND) is estimated by the difference of the other terms of the global carbon budget and compared to results of independent Dynamic Global Vegetation Models forced by observed climate, CO₂ and land cover change (some including nitrogen-carbon interactions). We compare the variability and mean land and ocean fluxes to estimates from three atmospheric inverse methods for three broad latitude bands. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ, reflecting the current capacity to characterise the annual estimates of each component of the global carbon budget. For the last decade available (2004–2013), E_FF was 8.9 ± 0.4 GtC yr⁻¹, E_LUC 0.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr⁻¹, G_ATM 4.3 ± 0.1 GtC yr⁻¹, S_OCEAN 2.6 ± 0.5 GtC yr⁻¹, and S_LAND 2.9 ± 0.8 GtC yr⁻¹. For year 2013 alone, E_FF grew to 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr⁻¹, 2.3% above 2012, contining the growth trend in these emissions. E_LUC was 0.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr⁻¹, G_ATM was 5.4 ± 0.2 GtC yr⁻¹, S_OCEAN was 2.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr⁻¹ and S_LAND was 2.5 ± 0.9 GtC yr⁻¹. G_ATM was high in 2013 reflecting a steady increase in E_FF and smaller and opposite changes between S_OCEAN and S_LAND compared to the past decade (2004–2013). The global atmospheric CO₂ concentration reached 395.31 ± 0.10 ppm averaged over 2013. We estimate that E_FF will increase by 2.5% (1.3–3.5%) to 10.1 ± 0.6 GtC in 2014 (37.0 ± 2.2 GtCO₂ yr⁻¹), 65% above emissions in 1990, based on projections of World Gross Domestic Product and recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy. From this projection of E_FF and assumed constant E_LUC for 2014, cumulative emissions of CO₂ will reach about 545 ± 55 GtC (2000 ± 200 GtCO₂) for 1870–2014, about 75% from E_FFand 25% from E_LUC. This paper documents changes in the methods and datasets used in this new carbon budget compared with previous publications of this living dataset (Le Quéré et al., 2013, 2014). All observations presented here can be downloaded from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (doi:10.3334/CDIAC/GCP_2014).