
Richard A HoughtonWoodwell Climate Research Center | WHRC
Richard A Houghton
PhD
About
372
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302,201
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Introduction
Education
September 1972 - May 1979
Publications
Publications (372)
Northern forests are an important carbon sink, but our understanding of the driving factors is limited due to discrepancies between dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) and atmospheric inversions. We show that DGVMs simulate a 50% lower sink (1.1 ± 0.5 PgC yr⁻¹ over 2001–2021) across North America, Europe, Russia, and China compared to atmosphe...
The uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by terrestrial ecosystems is critical for moderating climate change¹. To provide a ground-based long-term assessment of the contribution of forests to terrestrial CO2 uptake, we synthesized in situ forest data from boreal, temperate and tropical biomes spanning three decades. We found that the carbon sink in globa...
Transparent, accurate, comparable, and complete estimates of greenhouse gas emissions and removals are needed to support mitigation goals and performance assessments under the Paris Agreement. Here, we present a comparative analysis of the agriculture forestry and other land use (AFOLU) emission estimates from different datasets, including National...
The reduction of CO2 emissions and the enhancement of CO2 removals related to land use are considered essential for future pathways towards net-zero emissions and mitigating climate change. With the growing pressure under global climate treaties, country-level land-use CO2 flux data are becoming increasingly important. So far, country-level estimat...
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...
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 synthesise data sets...
Quantification of land surface–atmosphere fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2) and their trends and uncertainties is essential for monitoring progress of the EU27+UK bloc as it strives to meet ambitious targets determined by both international agreements and internal regulation. This study provides a consolidated synthesis of fossil sources (CO2 fossil)...
Unmanaged land areas are not included in current national reports on greenhouse gas emissions for the Paris Agreement. Here, we argue that carbon dioxide fluxes from all forest land need to be recorded in order to help tracking progress towards global climate targets.
The reduction of CO2 emissions and the enhancement of CO2 removals related to land use are considered essential for future pathways towards net-zero emissions and mitigating climate change. With the growing pressure under global climate treaties, country-level land use CO2 flux data are becoming increasingly important. So far, country-level estimat...
Estimates of the annual emissions of carbon from land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) are important for constructing global, regional, and national carbon budgets, which in turn help predict future rates of climate change and define potential strategies for mitigation. Here, we update a long-term (1850–2020) series of annual national ca...
Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ) and nitrous oxide (N 2 O) have made significant contributions to global warming since the pre-industrial period and are therefore targeted in international climate policy. There is substantial interest in tracking and apportioning national contributions to climate change and informi...
As the focus of climate policy shifts from pledges to implementation, there is a growing need to track progress on climate change mitigation at the country level, particularly for the land-use sector. Despite new tools and models providing unprecedented monitoring opportunities, striking differences remain in estimations of anthropogenic land-use C...
Quantification of land surface-atmosphere fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes and their trends and uncertainties is essential for monitoring progress of the EU27+UK bloc as it strives to meet ambitious targets determined by both international agreements and internal regulation. This study provides a consolidated synthesis of fossil sources (CO2 f...
Anthropogenic and natural CO2 fluxes on land constitute substantial CO2 emissions and removals but are usually not well distinguished in national greenhouse gas reporting. Instead, countries frequently combine natural and indirect human-induced CO2 fluxes on managed land in their reports, which diminishes their usefulness for designing policies con...
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...
Estimates of the annual emissions of carbon from Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) are important for tracking global, regional, and national carbon budgets, which in turn help predict future rates of climate change and help define potential solutions for mitigation. Here we update a long-term (1850–2020) series of annual, national ca...
Several key international policy frameworks involve forests, including the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). However, rules and guidelines that treat forest types equally regardless of their ecosystem integrity and risk profiles in terms of forest and carbon loss limit policy effectiveness and can f...
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 synthesise data sets...
Carbon budget accounting relies heavily on Food and Agriculture Organization land-use data reported by governments. Here we develop a new land-use and cover-change database for China, finding that differing historical survey methods biased China’s reported data causing large errors in Food and Agriculture Organization databases. Land ecosystem mode...
With the focus of climate policy shifting from pledges to implementation, there is an increasing need to track progress on climate change mitigation at country level, especially for the land-use sector. Despite new tools and models offering unprecedented monitoring opportunities, striking differences remain in estimations of anthropogenic land-use...
This chapter examines the scientific understanding of how climate change impacts land degradation, and vice versa, with a focus on non-drylands. Land degradation of drylands is covered in Chapter 3. After providing definitions and the context (Section 4.1) we proceed with a theoretical explanation of the different processes of land degradation and...
Significance
Despite increased interest in land-based carbon storage as a climate solution, there are physical limits on how much additional carbon can be incorporated into terrestrial ecosystems. To effectively determine where and how to act, jurisdictions need robust data illustrating the magnitude and distribution of opportunities to increase ca...
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 datasets a...
About half of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions remain in the atmosphere and half are taken up by the land and ocean¹. If the carbon uptake by land and ocean sinks becomes less efficient, for example, owing to warming oceans² or thawing permafrost³, a larger fraction of anthropogenic emissions will remain in the atmosphere, accelerating climate chang...
Land use/land cover change is a key component in terrestrial carbon cycle, yet there are still large uncertainties in the terrestrial carbon budget. To reduce such uncertainties and refine the spatial distribution of carbon flux, a 30-m Grid-based Carbon Accounting (GCA) model was proposed. We adapted a well-established bookkeeping model into a spa...
Southeast Asia is a region known for active land‐use changes (LUC) over the past 60 years; yet, how trends in net CO2 uptake and release resulting from LUC activities (net LUC flux) have changed through past decades remains uncertain. The level of uncertainty in net LUC flux from process‐based models is so high that it cannot be concluded that newe...
This chapter introduces greenhouse gas accounting activities that use “bottom-up” approaches. Bottom-up approaches can be categorized into inventory, bookkeeping, process-based modeling, and data-driven (i.e., remote sensing) methods. Activity data combined with emission factors, gain-loss, or stock-change analyses are the basis of each approach us...
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...
In their recent contribution, Scully et al (2021 Environ. Res. Lett. 16 043001) review and revise past life cycle assessments of corn-grain ethanol's carbon (C) intensity to suggest that a current 'central best estimate' is considerably less than all prior estimates. Their conclusion emerges from selection and recombination of sector-specific green...
Fluxes from deforestation, changes in land cover, land use and management practices (FLUC for simplicity) contributed to approximately 14 % of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in 2009–2018. Estimating FLUC accurately in space and in time remains, however, challenging, due to multiple sources of uncertainty in the calculation of these fluxes. This uncert...
Reliable quantification of the sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), including that of their trends and uncertainties, is essential to monitoring the progress in mitigating anthropogenic emissions under the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. This study provides a consolidated synthesis of estimates for all anthropogenic and na...
Scully et al [1] in their recent contribution review and revise past life cycle assessments (LCAs) of corn-grain ethanol’s carbon (C) intensity to suggest that a current ‘central best estimate’ is considerably less than all prior estimates. Their conclusion emerges from selection and recombination of sector-specific greenhouse gas emission predicti...
Managing forests for climate change mitigation requires action by diverse stakeholders undertaking different activities with overlapping objectives and spatial impacts. To date, several forest carbon monitoring systems have been developed for different regions using various data, methods and assumptions, making it difficult to evaluate mitigation p...
Nature-based solutions (NbS) can address climate change, biodiversity loss, human well-being and their interactions in an integrated way. A major barrier to achieving this is the lack of comprehensiveness in current carbon accounting which has focused on flows rather than stocks of carbon and led to perverse outcomes. We propose a new comprehensive...
Fluxes from deforestation, changes in land-cover, land-use and management practices (FLUC for simplicity) contributed to circa 14 % of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in 2009–2018. Estimating FLUC accurately in space and in time remains, however, challenging, due to multiple sources of uncertainty in the calculation of these fluxes. This uncertainty, i...
Reliable quantification of the sources and sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), including that of their trends and uncertainties, is essential to monitoring the progress in mitigating anthropogenic emissions under the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. This study provides a consolidated synthesis of estimates for all anthropogenic and na...
Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere in a changing climate – the “global carbon budget” – is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we de...
To constrain global warming, we must strongly curtail greenhouse gas emissions and capture excess atmospheric carbon dioxide1,2. Regrowing natural forests is a prominent strategy for capturing additional carbon³, but accurate assessments of its potential are limited by uncertainty and variability in carbon accumulation rates2,3. To assess why and w...
Emissions from land use and land cover change are a key component of the global carbon cycle. However, models are required to disentangle these emissions from the land carbon sink, as only the sum of both can be physically observed. Their assessment within the yearly community-wide effort known as the “Global Carbon Budget” remains a major difficul...
Understanding the driving mechanisms of the interannual variability (IAV) of the net land carbon balance (Snet) is important to predict future climate–carbon cycle feedbacks. Past studies showed that the IAV of Snet was correlated with tropical climate variation and controlled by semiarid vegetation. But today’s land ecosystems are also under exten...
Given the short time-frame to limit global warming, and the current emissions gap, it is critical to prioritise mitigation actions. To date, scant attention has been paid to the mitigation benefits of primary forest protection. We estimated tropical forest ecosystem carbon stocks and flows. The ecosystem carbon stock of primary tropical forests is...
The Global Carbon Project (GCP) has published global carbon budgets annually since 2007 (Raupach et al., 2007; Canadell et al., 2007). There are many scientists involved, but the terrestrial fluxes that appear in the budgets are not well understood by ecologists and biogeochemists outside of that community. The purpose of this paper is to make the...
Abstract. Emissions from land-use and land-cover change are a key component of the global carbon cycle. Models are required to disentangle these emissions and the land carbon sink, however, because only the sum of both can be physically observed. Their assessment within the yearly community-wide effort known as the Global Carbon Budget remains a ma...
Methods to estimate greenhouse gas emissions and removals in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) Sector can be divided into two broad categories: 1) methods that can be applied in a similar way for any of the types of land use (i.e., generic methods for Forest Land, Cropland, Grassland, Wetlands, Settlements and Other Land); and 2)...
Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere – the “global carbon budget” – 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 m...
Recognizing that some but not all countries may choose to address emissions and removals from natural disturbances on managed land outside the inventory process, this guidance is provided as an option that may be used by countries that choose to disaggregate their reported MLP emissions and removals (i.e. all emissions and removals on managed land)...
As the global food system contributes significantly to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, understanding the sources of GHG emissions embodied in different components of food systems is important. The collapse of the Soviet Union triggered a massive restructuring of the domestic food systems, namely declining consumption of animal products, crop...
Land and climate interact in complex ways through changes in forcing and multiple biophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks across different spatial and temporal scales. This chapter assesses climate impact on land and land impacts on climate, the human contributions to these changes, as well as land-based adaptation and mitigation response options...
The Hansen et al . critique centers on the lack of spatial agreement between two very different datasets. Nonetheless, properly constructed comparisons designed to reconcile the two datasets yield up to 90% agreement (e.g., in South America).