Michael R Raupach

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation | CSIRO · Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research

Extreme rainfall conditions in Australia during the 2010/2011 La Niña resulted in devastating floods claiming 35 lives, causing billions of dollars in damages, and far-reaching impacts on global climate, including a significant drop in global sea level and record terrestrial carbon uptake. Northeast Australian 2010/2011 rainfall was 84% above avera...

The relative complexity of the mechanisms underlying savanna ecosystem dynamics, in comparison to other biomes such as temperate and tropical forests, challenges the representation of such dynamics in ecosystem and Earth system models. A realistic representation of processes governing carbon allocation and phenology for the two defining elements of...

The growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations since industrialization is characterized by large interannual variability, mostly resulting from variability in CO2 uptake by terrestrial ecosystems (typically termed carbon sink). However, the contributions of regional ecosystems to that variability are not well known. Using an ens...

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 data sets and a methodology to quantify all ma...

Any limit on future global warming is associated with a quota on cumulative global CO2 emissions. We translate this global carbon quota to regional and national scales, on a spectrum of sharing principles that extends from continuation of the present distribution of emissions to an equal per-capita distribution of cumulative emissions. A blend of t...

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage could be used to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, its credibility as a climate change mitigation option is unproven and its widespread deployment in climate stabilization scenarios might become a dangerous distraction.

Efforts to limit climate change below a given temperature level require that global emissions of CO2 cumulated over time remain below a limited quota. This quota varies depending on the temperature level, the desired probability of staying below this level and the contributions of other gases. In spite of this restriction, global emissions of CO2 f...

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 maj...

Savanna ecosystems comprise 22% of the global terrestrial surface and 25% of Australia (almost 1.9 million km2) and provide significant ecosystem services through carbon and water cycles and the maintenance of biodiversity. The current structure, composition and distribution of Australian savannas have co-evolved with fire, yet remain driven by the...

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 data sets and a methodology to quantify all ma...

Satellite remote sensing products of the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) are routinely used for diverse applications in Earth-System and land-surface modelling and monitoring. The availability of numerous products creates a need to understand the level of consistency between products, and reasons for inconsistencies...

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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 climate policy process, and project future climate change. Present-day analysis requires the combination of a range of d...

To assess both past and future responses of the coupled terrestrial water and carbon cycles to climate change and variability, it is important to characterise the sensitivities of water and carbon fluxes and stores to long-term changes in drivers such as precipitation (P), temperature (T) and CO2 concentration. Here we quantify observed sensitiviti...

Through 1959-2012, an airborne fraction (AF) of 44% of total anthropogenic CO2 emissions remained in the atmosphere, with the rest being taken up by land and ocean CO2 sinks. Understanding of this uptake is critical because it greatly alleviates the emissions reductions required for climate mitigation. An observable quantity that reflects sink prop...

Accurate assessments 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 climate policy process, and project future climate change. Present-day analysis requires the combination of a range of data, algor...

Information about the carbon cycle potentially constrains the water cycle, and vice versa. This paper explores the utility of multiple observation sets to constrain a land surface model of Australian terrestrial carbon and water cycles, and the resulting mean carbon pools and fluxes, as well as their temporal and spatial variability. Observations i...

This paper reports a study of the full carbon (C-CO₂) budget of the Australian continent, focussing on 1990–2011 in the context of estimates over two centuries. The work is a contribution to the RECCAP (REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes) project, as one of numerous regional studies. In constructing the budget, we estimate th...

It is widely recognised that defining trade-offs between greenhouse gas emissions using ‘emission equivalence’ based on global warming potentials (GWPs) referenced to carbon dioxide produces anomalous results when applied to methane. The short atmospheric lifetime of methane, compared to the timescales of CO2 uptake, leads to the greenhouse warming...

The latest carbon dioxide emissions continue to track the high end of emission scenarios, making it even less likely global warming will stay below 2 °C. A shift to a 2 °C pathway requires immediate significant and sustained global mitigation, with a probable reliance on net negative emissions in the longer term.

This paper reports a study of the full carbon (C-CO₂) budget of the Australian continent, focussing on 1990–2011 in the context of estimates over two centuries. The work is a contribution to the RECCAP (REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes) project, as one of numerous regional studies being synthesised in RECCAP. In constructin...

Information about the carbon cycle potentially constrains the water cycle, and vice versa. This paper explores the utility of multiple observation sets to constrain a land surface model of Australian terrestrial carbon and water cycles, and the resulting mean carbon pools and fluxes, as well as their temporal and spatial variability. Observations i...

Measurements of turbulence structure in a wind-tunnel model canopy of bluff elements show many of the features associated with vegetation canopies and roughness sublayers but also display features more characteristic of the inertial sublayer (ISL). Points of similarity include the existence of an inflexion point in the space-time averaged streamwis...

http://www.cawcr.gov.au/publications/technicalreports/CTR_057.pdf

Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel combustion and cement production grew 5.9% in 2010, surpassed 9 Pg of carbon (Pg C) for the first time, and more than offset the 1.4% decrease in 2009. The impact of the 2008 2009 global financial crisis (GFC) on emissions has been short-lived owing to strong emissions growth in emerging economies, a...

Long-term future warming is primarily constrained by cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide. Previous studies have estimated that humankind has already emitted about 50% of the total amount allowed if warming, relative to pre-industrial, is to stay below 2°C (refs , ). Carbon dioxide emissions will thus need to decrease substantially in the future...

Over half of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are removed naturally by land and ocean carbon sinks. New analysis indicates that the land sink is increasing in some surprising places.

Interactions between the carbon cycle, climate and human societies are subject to several major vulnerabilities, broadly defined as factors contributing to the risk of harm from human-induced climate change. We assess five vulnerabilities: (1) effects of increasing CO2 on the partition of anthropogenic carbon between atmospheric, land and ocean res...

Interactions between the carbon cycle, climate and human societies are subject to several major vulnerabilities, broadly defined as factors contributing to the risk of harm from human-induced climate change. We assess five vulnerabilities: (1) effects of increasing CO2 on the partition of anthropogenic carbon between atmospheric, land and ocean res...

We present an approach for diagnosing errors in land surface models in the time and frequency domains. The approach is applied to the Community Atmosphere-Biosphere-Land Exchange (CABLE). We compare modeled and observed fluxes of net ecosystem carbon exchange (NEE), latent heat (LE) and sensible heat (H) at two different forested flux station sites...

The international carbon cycle research community is currently coordinating the largest, most comprehensive assessment it has ever undertaken: the Regional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP; http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/reccap). The objective is to establish the mean carbon balance and change over the period 1990-2009 for all subc...

The relative influences of Indian and Pacific Ocean modes of variability on Australian rainfall and soil moisture are investigated for seasonal, interannual, and decadal time scales. For the period 1900-2006, observations, reanalysis products, and hindcasts of soil moisture during the cool season (June October) are used to assess the impacts of El...

Australia's natural environment is adapted to low rainfall availability and high variability but human systems are less able to adapt to variability in the hydrological cycle. Understanding the mechanisms underlying drought persistence and severity is vital to contextualising future climate change. Multiple external forcings mean the mechanisms of...

In the context of the REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP), we will present preliminary results on the mean and variability of the terrestrial carbon budget of Australia for the period 1990-2009. We will attempt to reconcile a number of bottom-up and top-down flux estimates including: (1) net ecosystem production (with attributio...

The presentation will cover two components: 1) the latest global carbon budget and 2) the requirements to operationalize its annual update and trend reanalysis to enhance policy relevance and scientific understanding of the current carbon cycle perturbation. First, we will present the new update of the global carbon-CO2 budget covering 1958-2009, i...

Climate change policies need to consider the contribution of each emitting region to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. We calculate regional attributions of increased atmospheric CO2 using two different assumptions about land sinks. In the first approach, each absorber region is attributed 'domestic sinks' that occur within its boundaries...

Emissions of CO2 are the main contributor to anthropogenic climate change. Here we present updated information on their present and near-future estimates. We calculate that global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning decreased by 1.3% in 2009 owing to the global financial and economic crisis that started in 2008; this is half the decrease anticip...

We describe a system for constraining the spatial distribution of fossil fuel emissions of CO2. The system is based on a modified Kaya identity which expresses emissions as a product of areal population density, per capita economic activity, energy intensity of the economy, and carbon intensity of energy. We apply the methodology of data assimilati...

There has never been a greater need for delivering timely and policy-relevant information on the magnitude and evolution of the human-disturbed carbon cycle. In this paper, we present the main thematic areas of an ongoing global research agenda and prioritize future needs based on relevance for the evolution of the carbon-climate-human system. Thes...

The international political commitment to limit global warming to 2 °C urgently requires the stabilisation of radiative forcing from carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere. This can be achieved only with information on the full balance of GHG, including both the natural and the anthropogenic emissions and sinks. The...

We evaluate the joint use of satellite-observed intensity of urban nightlights and census-based population density data as constraints on the spatial structure of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. Findings are: (1) the probability that population density exceeds a given value follows a power-law distribution over two orders of magnitude of populatio...

Life on earth has created vast stores of detrital carbon - the remnants of carbon-based organisms after they have died. These carbon stores range from dead leaves and wood to the fossil carbon in coal, oil and gas. They contain large amounts of usable chemical energy. When the ancestors of modern humans learned to access this energy by mastering fi...

We investigate the effect of source distribution on the bulk transfer of passive scalars between rough, vegetated land surfaces and the atmosphere, using data from a wind-tunnel experiment in which passive heat was emitted from both the underlying surface and canopy elements of a three-dimensional regular bluff-body array. The experimental results...

The Australian Water Availability Project (AWAP) is a system that operationally delivers weekly estimates of soil moisture stores and water fluxes at continental scale over Australia. The highly modularized system implements a miniature spatial data infrastructure by exploiting a simple data format standard and metadata scheme to enable the flexibl...

Efforts to control climate change require the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This can only be achieved through a drastic reduction of global CO2 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 tra...

An understanding of the regional contributions and trends of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is critical to design mitigation strategies aimed at stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases. Here we report CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and land use change in Africa for various time periods. Africa was responsible for a...

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

10.1038/ngeo689

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

We investigate application of nonlinear variants of the Kalman filter (KF) to sequential parameter estimation in biogeochemical models, with particular focus on two components of the statistical model: Q, the covariance of the stochastic forcing which we use to represent model error, and R, the observation error covariance matrix. We explored sensi...

An understanding of the regional contributions and trends of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions is critical to design mitigation strategies aimed at stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases. Here we report CO₂ emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and land use change in Africa for various time periods. Africa...

An understanding of the regional contributions and trends of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is critical to design mitigation strategies aimed at stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases. Here we report CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and land use change in Africa for various time periods. Africa was responsible for a...

We quantify the relative roles of natural and an- thropogenic influences on the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 and the CO2 airborne fraction, considering both in- terdecadal trends and interannual variability. A combined ENSO-Volcanic Index (EVI) relates most ( 75%) of the interannual variability in CO2 growth rate to the El-Ni ˜ no- Southern-Oscil...

Forests currently absorb billions of tons of CO2 globally every year, an economic subsidy worth hundreds of billions of dollars if an equivalent sink had to be created in other ways. Concerns about the permanency of forest carbon stocks, difficulties in quantifying stock changes, and the threat of environmental and socioeconomic impacts of large-sc...

The carbon cycle and indeed the entire earth system are now inextricably linked with human activities (Global Carbon Project 2003; Steffen et al. 2004; Field and Raupach 2004), so that the ‘carbon—climate—human system’ constitutes a single, coupled entity in which interacting processes link all of its major components. Linking processes of primary...

Actions to manage carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gas) emissions at regional and local scales take place amid multiple requirements, participants, and agents. To address and solve tensions that emerge from diverse objectives and stakeholder needs, participatory decision processes and information tools are required. This paper explores how regi...

The growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO(2)), the largest human contributor to human-induced climate change, is increasing rapidly. Three processes contribute to this rapid increase. Two of these processes concern emissions. Recent growth of the world economy combined with an increase in its carbon intensity have led to rapid growth in fos...

To study the dispersion of scalar trace constituents such as heat, water vapour or CO2 from extensive sources within vegetation canopies, a Lagrangian approach is essential because of the need to account for the influence of travel time (as a fraction of the Lagrangian time scale) on the dispersion properties of marked fluid particles. A simple, an...

CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel burning and industrial processes have been accelerating at a global scale, with their growth rate increasing from 1.1% y(-1) for 1990-1999 to >3% y(-1) for 2000-2004. The emissions growth rate since 2000 was greater than for the most fossil-fuel intensive of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emissions scen...