Global Carbon Budget - Ocean

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.

The Global Carbon Budget describes data sets and methodology to quantify the five major components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties. These five components are CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels and industry, CO₂ emissions from land-use change, the growth rate of amospheric CO₂ concentration, the ocean carbon sink and the land carbon sink.

Less than half of all CO₂ emissions remain in the atmosphere, the other half is taken up in roughly equal amounts by the ocean and by the terrestrial biosphere. Since the start of the industrialization land use emissions and the positive effects of the land sink have approximately balanced. The oceans are therefore the most important net sink for anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.

Less than half of all CO₂ emissions remain in the atmosphere, the other half is taken up in roughly equal amounts by the ocean and by the terrestrial biosphere. Since the start of the industrialization land use emissions and the positive effects of the land sink have approximately balanced. The oceans are therefore the most important net sink for anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.

Fair use policy for model data

The data and model output provided on this site are freely available and were furnished by individual scientists who encourage their use.

Ocean models: The global annual average of the ocean sink data are available with the Global Carbon Budget publication. For the current year global carbon budget, the ocean model gridded data are available on request judith.hauck at awi.de. If you would like to use this model output, please inform by email with a list of the scientists who will use the data, the data you intend to use, and the purpose for using the data. Your request will be copied to the scientists who produced the model archive. Please reference the source of the data or model output as a citation and in the acknowledgments. If the data or model output is central to your analysis, co-authorship should be considered. The scientists will inform you if they feel they should be offered participation as authors. If your work directly competes with an ongoing investigation, the scientists who provided the data or model output may ask that they have the opportunity to submit a manuscript before you submit one that uses their data or model output. An agreement on such matters should be reached quickly and before publishing and/or using the data for publication. All studies should be circulated to the modelling groups prior to submission.

For gridded model output from previous global carbon budgets please contact the modelling groups directly.