The Australian terrestrial carbon budget: preliminary results

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 attribution to gross primary production and respiration) using 5 land surface models applied globally and 1 model applied regionally at high resolution (CABLE); (2) Land use change fluxes from the Australian National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS); (3) Fire emissions from the Global Fire Emission Database (GFED); and (4) net carbon fluxes between land and atmosphere as seen by a range of CO2 atmospheric inversions. Model outputs will be ranked by their performance against continental and regional observations and weighted accordingly for model averages.