Land-Use Emissions Play a Critical Role in Land Based Mitigation for Paris Climate Targets

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 2938 - 13
• Main Authors: Harper, Anna B., Powell, Tom, Cox, Peter M., House, Joanna, Huntingford, Chris, Lenton, Timothy M., Sitch, Stephen, Burke, Eleanor, Chadburn, Sarah E., Collins, William J., Comyn-Platt, Edward, Daioglou, Vassilis, Doelman, Jonathan C., Hayman, Garry, Robertson, Eddy, van Vuuren, Detlef, Wiltshire, Andy, Webber, Christopher P., Bastos, Ana, Boysen, Lena, Ciais, Philippe, Devaraju, Narayanappa, Jain, Atul K., Krause, Andreas, Poulter, Ben, Shu, Shijie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Goddard Space Flight Center Springer 07.08.2018; Nature Publishing Group UK; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 704/106/694/682; 704/172/4081; 704/47/4113; Afforestation; Atmosphere; Biomass; Biomass energy; Biomass energy production; Carbon content; Carbon dioxide; Carbon dioxide removal; Carbon sequestration; Climate change; Climate change mitigation; Climatology; Deforestation; Earth Resources And Remote Sensing; Earth Sciences; Emissions; Energy storage; Environmental Sciences; Fossil fuels; Global warming; Humanities and Social Sciences; Land use; Meteorology And Climatology; multidisciplinary; Net losses; Reforestation; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sciences of the Universe
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-05340-z

Scenarios that limit global warming to below 2 degrees Centigrade by 2100 assume significant land-use change to support large-scale carbon dioxide (CO2) removal from the atmosphere by afforestation/reforestation, avoided deforestation, and Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). The more ambitious mitigation scenarios require even greater land area for mitigation and/or earlier adoption of CO2 removal strategies. Here we show that additional land-use change to meet a 1.5 degrees Centigrade climate change target could result in net losses of carbon from the land. The effectiveness of BECCS strongly depends on several assumptions related to the choice of biomass, the fate of initial above ground biomass, and the fossil-fuel emissions offset in the energy system. Depending on these factors, carbon removed from the atmosphere through BECCS could easily be offset by losses due to land-use change. If BECCS involves replacing high-carbon content ecosystems with crops, then forest-based mitigation could be more efficient for atmospheric CO2 removal than BECCS.