Contribution of Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Emission to Global Radiative Forcing and Offset of Terrestrial Ecosystem During 2000-2015 in China

Abstract

The concept of Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) proposed by IPCC defines radiative forcing (RF) as an indicator to assess the impact of anthropogenic development and emissions on global climate. However, the contribution of individual country to global RF is somewhat controversial relative to the global RF situation. Moreover, simply considering anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emission and neglecting the carbon cycle of terrestrial ecosystems also have significant deficiencies in assessing the climatic effects of CO2. Since 2000, China’s CO2 emission data is relatively open, which can be used to assess the contribution of anthropogenic CO2 emission to global RF. At the same time, the offset effect of terrestrial ecosystem during 2000 - 2015 in China also been analyzed by a bookkeeping model. Preliminary results showed that the accumulative CO2 concentration was 11.21 ppm until 2015, and the CO2 concentration decreased to 8.90 ppm when the carbon sink effect was considered. The CO2 contribution of China to global RF was 7.93% during the study period. The carbon uptake of terrestrial ecosystems played a clear role in cooling effect correspondingly. This study highlights the role of natural carbon sinks and provides a working framework for assessing the climate effects of natural and anthropogenic impacts on a temporal and spatial scale.

Keywords: CO2; carbon cycle; anthropogenic emissions; ecosystem; climate change