Africa and the global carbon cycle

The African continent has a large and growing role in the global carbon cycle, with potentially important climate change implications. However, the sparse observation network in and around the African continent means that Africa is one of the weakest links in our understanding of the global carbon cycle. Here, we combine data from regional and global inventories as well as forward and inverse model analyses to appraise what is known about Africa's continental-scale carbon dynamics. With low fossil emissions and productivity that largely compensates respiration, land conversion is Africa's primary net carbon release, much of it through burning of forests. Savanna fire emissions, though large, represent a short-term source that is offset by ensuing regrowth. While current data suggest a near zero decadal-scale carbon balance, interannual climate fluctuations (especially drought) induce sizeable variability in net ecosystem productivity and savanna fire emissions such that Africa is a major source of interannual variability in global atmospheric CO(2). Considering the continent's sizeable carbon stocks, their seemingly high vulnerability to anticipated climate and land use change, as well as growing populations and industrialization, Africa's carbon emissions and their interannual variability are likely to undergo substantial increases through the 21st century

The fraternity of female friendly societies

In this chapter, the structured reciprocity of female friendly societies, even those with overt patrons, is presented as a categorization which is also applicable to men’s societies. The first part addresses the notion of independence, then the focus is on the financial aspect of the Southill Female Friendly Society, SFFS, which existed between 1844 and 1948 for women of that Bedfordshire village in England who were of ‘a good and honest character’, in good health and aged between 14 and 45 when they joined. Members had few other opportunities to reduce the risks associated with illness other than accept the uneven reciprocity of the SFFS. The patrons may also have seen the SFFS as an investment opportunity. Then the attractions of Southill, with its healthy housing and relatively liberal interpretation of relief legislation, are presented as evidence of another important attribute of successful friendly societies, their centrality to social networking. Next is considered how far mutuality and philanthropy were interwoven within the SFFS and elsewhere. An assessment of the roles of civil engagement and moral regulation within friendly societies follows and the final section suggests that a notion of fraternity which emphasizes flexible reciprocity can net together both vast international brotherhoods and tiny village societies in a way which illuminate understandings of nineteenth-century society

Trends in the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide

Efforts to control climate change require the stabilization of atmospheric CO 2 concentrations. This can only be achieved through a drastic reduction of global CO 2 emissions. Yet fossil fuel emissions increased by 29% between 2000 and 2008, in conjunction with increased contributions from emerging economies, from the production and international trade of goods and services, and from the use of coal as a fuel source. In contrast, emissions from land-use changes were nearly constant. Between 1959 and 2008, 43% of each year's CO 2 emissions remained in the atmosphere on average; the rest was absorbed by carbon sinks on land and in the oceans. In the past 50 years, the fraction of CO 2 emissions that remains in the atmosphere each year has likely increased, from about 40% to 45%, and models suggest that this trend was caused by a decrease in the uptake of CO 2 by the carbon sinks in response to climate change and variability. Changes in the CO 2 sinks are highly uncertain, but they could have a significant influence on future atmospheric CO 2 levels. It is therefore crucial to reduce the uncertainties. © 2009 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

Global Carbon Budget 2023

This is the final version. Available on open access from Copernicus Publications via the DOI in this recordData availability statement: This living-data update documents changes in methods and data sets 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-2023 (Friedlingstein et al., 2023). The data presented here are made available in the belief that their wide dissemination will lead to greater understanding of and new scientific insights into how the carbon cycle works, how humans are altering it, and how we can mitigate the resulting human-driven climate change. Full contact details and information on how to cite the data shown here are given at the top of each page in the accompanying database and are summarized in Table 2. The accompanying database includes three Excel files or ganized in the following spreadsheets. The file Global_Carbon_Budget_2023v1.0.xlsx includes the following: 1. a summary 2. the global carbon budget (1959–2022), 3. the historical global carbon budget (1750–2022), 4. global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement pro duction by fuel type and the per capita emissions (1850– 2022), 5. CO2 emissions from land-use change from the individ ual bookkeeping models (1959–2022); 6. the ocean CO2 sink from the individual global ocean biogeochemistry models and f CO2 products (1959– 2022), 7. the terrestrial CO2 sink from the individual DGVMs (1959–2022), 8. the cement carbonation CO2 sink (1959–2022). The file National_Fossil_Carbon_Emissions_2023v1.0.xlsx includes the following: 1. a summary, 2. territorial country CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement production (1850–2022), 3. consumption country CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and cement production and emissions transfer from the international trade of goods and services (1990–2020) using CDIAC/UNFCCC data as reference, 4. emissions transfers (consumption minus territorial emissions, 1990–2020), 5. country definitions. The file National_LandUseChange_Carbon_Emissions_ 2023v1.0.xlsx includes the following: 1. a summary 2. territorial country CO2 emissions from land use change (1850–2022) from three bookkeeping models. All three spreadsheets are published by the Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) Carbon Portal and are available at https://doi.org/10.18160/GCP-2023 (Friedlingstein et al., 2023). National emissions data are also available on Zenodo (Andrew and Peters, 2022, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7215364), from the Global Carbon Atlas (http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/, last access: 9 November 2023, Global Carbon Project, 2023), and from Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions, last access: 9 November 2023, Our World in Data, 2023).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 data sets and methodology 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), mainly deforestation, 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 ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) is estimated with global ocean biogeochemistry models and observation-based fCO2 products. The terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) 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 resulting carbon budget imbalance (BIM), the difference between the estimated total emissions and the estimated changes in the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere, is a measure of imperfect data and incomplete understanding of the contemporary carbon cycle. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ. For the year 2022, EFOS increased by 0.9 % relative to 2021, with fossil emissions at 9.9±0.5 Gt C yr−1 (10.2±0.5 Gt C yr−1 when the cement carbonation sink is not included), and ELUC was 1.2±0.7 Gt C yr−1, for a total anthropogenic CO2 emission (including the cement carbonation sink) of 11.1±0.8 Gt C yr−1 (40.7±3.2 Gt CO2 yr−1). Also, for 2022, GATM was 4.6±0.2 Gt C yr−1 (2.18±0.1 ppm yr−1; ppm denotes parts per million), SOCEAN was 2.8±0.4 Gt C yr−1, and SLAND was 3.8±0.8 Gt C yr−1, with a BIM of −0.1 Gt C yr−1 (i.e. total estimated sources marginally too low or sinks marginally too high). The global atmospheric CO2 concentration averaged over 2022 reached 417.1±0.1 ppm. Preliminary data for 2023 suggest an increase in EFOS relative to 2022 of +1.1 % (0.0 % to 2.1 %) globally and atmospheric CO2 concentration reaching 419.3 ppm, 51 % 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 1959–2022, with a near-zero overall budget imbalance, although discrepancies of up to around 1 Gt C 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 changes emissions, (2) a 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 strength of the ocean sink over the last decade