Articles | Volume 16, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-117-2019
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-117-2019
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16 Jan 2019
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 16 Jan 2019

Global atmospheric CO2 inverse models converging on neutral tropical land exchange, but disagreeing on fossil fuel and atmospheric growth rate

Benjamin Gaubert, Britton B. Stephens, Sourish Basu, Frédéric Chevallier, Feng Deng, Eric A. Kort, Prabir K. Patra, Wouter Peters, Christian Rödenbeck, Tazu Saeki, David Schimel, Ingrid Van der Laan-Luijkx, Steven Wofsy, and Yi Yin

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AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision
ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (11 Dec 2018) by Paul Stoy
AR by Benjamin Gaubert on behalf of the Authors (11 Dec 2018)  Author's response 
ED: Publish as is (14 Dec 2018) by Paul Stoy
AR by Benjamin Gaubert on behalf of the Authors (17 Dec 2018)  Manuscript 
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Short summary
We have compared global carbon budgets calculated from numerical inverse models and CO2 observations, and evaluated how these systems reproduce vertical gradients in atmospheric CO2 from aircraft measurements. We found that available models have converged on near-neutral tropical total fluxes for several decades, implying consistent sinks in intact tropical forests, and that assumed fossil fuel emissions and predicted atmospheric growth rates are now the dominant axes of disagreement.
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