Abstract
Climate change negotiations aim to reduce net greenhouse-gas emissions by encouraging direct reductions of emissions and crediting countries for their terrestrial greenhouse-gas sinks. Ecosystem carbon dioxide uptake has offset nearly 10% of Europe's fossil fuel emissions, but not all of this may be creditable under the rules of the Kyoto Protocol. Although this treaty recognizes the importance of methane and nitrous oxide emissions, scientific research has largely focused on carbon dioxide. Here we review recent estimates of European carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide fluxes between 2000 and 2005, using both top-down estimates based on atmospheric observations and bottom-up estimates derived from ground-based measurements. Both methods yield similar fluxes of greenhouse gases, suggesting that methane emissions from feedstock and nitrous oxide emissions from arable agriculture are fully compensated for by the carbon dioxide sink provided by forests and grasslands. As a result, the balance for all greenhouse gases across Europe's terrestrial biosphere is near neutral, despite carbon sequestration in forests and grasslands. The trend towards more intensive agriculture and logging is likely to make Europe's land surface a significant source of greenhouse gases. The development of land management policies which aim to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions should be a priority.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Change history
13 December 2009
In the version of this Progress Article originally published, the colour scale for Fig. 3e and f was incorrect and Fig. 3h and i were incorrect. These errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions.
References
Meinhausen, M. et al. Greenhouse-gas emissions targets for limiting global warming to 2 °C. Nature 458, 1158–1162 (2009).
Schulze, E.-D. & Heimann, H. Carbon and water exchange of terrestrial systems in Asian Change in the Context of Global Change Vol. 3 (eds Galloway, J. N. & Melillo, J.) 145–161 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998).
Schulze, E. D. & Caldwell, M. M. Ecophysiology of Photosynthesis (Springer, 1994).
Epstein, E. & Bloom, A. J. Mineral Nutrition of Plants: Principles and Perspectives (Sinauer, 2005).
Jung, M., Herold, M., Henkel, K. & Churkina, G. Exploring synergies of land cover products for carbon cycle modeling. Remote Sens. Environ. 101, 534–553 (2006).
Gifford, R. M. A comparison of potential photosynthesis, productivity and yield of plant species with differing photosynthetic metabolism. Aust. J. Plant Physiol. 1, 107–117 (1994).
Schulze, E.-D. in Encyclopedia of Plant Physiology. Physiological Plant Ecology II. Vol. 12B. Water Relations and Photosynthetic Productivity (eds Lange, O. L., Nobel, P. S., Osmond, C. B. & Ziegler, H.) 615–676 (Berlin, 1982).
Rillig M. C. Arbuscular mycorrhizae and terrestrial ecosystem processes. Ecol. Lett. 7, 740–754 (2004).
Ciais, P. et al. Carbon accumulation in European forests. Nature Geosci. 1, 1–5 (2008).
German Advisory Council on Global Change Welt im Wandel — Zukunftsfähige Bioenergie und Nachhaltige Landnutzung (WBGU, 2008).
Sims, R. E. H., Hastings, H., Schlamadinger, B., Taylor, G. & Smith, P. Energy crops: Current status and future perspectives. Glob. Change Biol. 12, 2054–2076 (2006).
IPCC Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (eds Solomon, S. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008).
Jungkunst, H. F. & Fiedler, S. Latitudinal differentiated water table control of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide fluxes from hydromorphic soils: Feedbacks to climate change. Glob. Change Biol. 13, 2668–2683 (2007).
Peylin, P. et al. Daily CO2 flux estimates over Europe from continuous atmospheric measurements: 1, inverse methodology. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 5, 3173–3186 (2005).
Roedenbeck, C., Houweling, S., Gloor, M. & Heimann, M. CO2 flux history 1982–2001 inferred from atmospheric data using a global inversion of atmospheric transport. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 3, 1919–1964 (2003).
Peters, W. et al. Seven years of recent European net terrestrial carbon dioxide exchange constrained by atmospheric observations. Glob. Change Biol. (in the press)
Bousquet, P. et al. Contribution of anthropogentic and natural sources to atmospheric methane variability. Nature 443, 439–443 (2006).
Manning, A. J., Ryall, D. B., Derwent, R. G., Simmonds, P. G. & O'Doherty, S. Estimating European emissions of ozone-depleting and greenhouse gases using observations and a modeling back-attribution technique. J. Geophys. Res. 108, D14,4405 (2003).
Huang, J. et al. Estimation of regional emissions of nitrous oxide from 1997 to 2005 using multinetwork measurements, a chemical transport model, and an inverse model. J. Geophys. Res. 113, D17313 (2008).
Hirsch, A. I. et al. Inverse modeling estimates of the global nitrous oxide surface flux from 1998–2001. Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles 20, GB1008 (2006).
Messager, C. Ten years of CO2, CH4, CO and N2O fluxes over Western Europe inferred from atmospheric measurements at Mace Head, Ireland. Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss. 8, 1191–1237 (2008).
Luyssaert, S. et al. The European carbon balance revisited. Part 3: Forests. Glob. Change Biol. (in the press).
Soussana, J. F. et al. Full accounting of the greenhouse gas (CO2, N2O, CH4) budget of nine European grassland sites. Agr. Ecosyst. Environ. 121, 121–134 (2007).
Ciais, P. et al. The European carbon balance revisited. Part 2: Croplands. Glob. Change Biol. (in the press).
Drösler, M., Freibauer, A., Christensen, T. R. & Friborg, T. Observations and status of peatland greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. Ecol. Studies 203, 237–256 (2008).
Saarnio, S., Winiwarter, W. & Leitão, J. Methane release from wetlands and watercourses in Europe. Atmos. Environ. 43, 1421–1429 (2009).
Janssens, I. A. et al. Europe's terrestrial biosphere absorbs 7 to 12 % of the European anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Science 300, 1538–1542 (2003).
Pacala, S. W. et al., Consistent land- and atmosphere-based US carbon sink estimates. Science 292, 2316–2320 (2001).
Luyssaert, S. et al. CO2-balance of boreal, temperate and tropical forests derived from a global database. Glob. Change Biol. 13, 1–29 (2007).
Shvidenko, A. & Nilsson, S. Dynamics of Russian forests and the carbon budget in 1961–1998: an assessment based on long-term inventory data. Climatic Change 55, 5–37 (2002).
Shvidenko, A., Nilsson, S., Stolbovoi, V. S., Rozhkov, V. A. & Gluck, M. Aggregated estimation of basic parameters of biological production and the carbon budget of Russian terrestrial ecosystems 2: Net primary production. Russ. J. Ecol. 32, 71–77 (2001).
German Advisory Council on Global Change World in Transition: Towards Sustainable Energy Systems (Earthscan, 2004).
Magnani, F. et al. The human footprint in the carbon cycle of temperate an boreal forests. Nature 447, 849–851 (2007).
Smith, P. et al. Greenhouse gas mitigation in agriculture. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 363, 789–813 (2008).
Janssens, I. A. & Luyssaert, S. Nitrogen's carbon bonus. Nature Geosci. 2, 318–319 (2009).
Jackson, R. B. et al. Protecting climate with forests. Environ. Res. Lett. 3, 044006 (2008).
Ciais P. et al. The European carbon balance revisited. Part 4: Fossil fuel emissions. Glob. Change Biol. (in the press).
Etiope, G., Friddriksson, T., Italiano, F., Winiwarter, W. & Theloke, J. Natural emissions of methane from geothermal and volcanic sources in Europe. J. Volcanol. Geoth. Res. 165, 76–86 (2007).
Etiope, G. Natural emissions of methane from geological seepage in Europe. Atmos. Environ. 43, 1430–1443 (2009).
Ciais, P. et al. The impact of lateral carbon fluxes on the European carbon balance. Biogeosciences 5, 1259–1271 (2008).
Profft, I., Mund, M., Weber, G. E., Weller, E. & Schulze, E. D. Forest management and carbon sequestration in wood products. Eur. J. For. Res. (in the press).
Meybeck, M. Global Distribution and Behaviour of Carbon Species in World Rivers in Soil Erosion and Carbon Dynamics (eds Rose, E., Lal, R., Feller, C., Barthès, B. & Steward, B. A.) 209–238 (Chemical Rubber Co. Press, 2005).
Smith, K. A. et al. Oxidation of atmospheric methane in Northern European soils, comparison with other ecosystems, and uncertainties in the global terrestrial sink. Glob. Change Biol. 6, 791–803 (2000).
Acknowledgements
The CarboEurope project team is a diverse group of about 300 scientists who are collectively responsible for obtaining the measurements on which this integrated analysis is based. We are truly grateful to every one of them. We acknowledge funding from the European Union 6th Framework Programme through CarboEurope-IP (Project No. GOCE-CT-2003ñ505572). The EU funding was supplemented by national funding from the different nations participating in the project. S.L. was supported by the Centre of Excellence ECO (UA-Methusalem). P.S. is a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award Holder. We thank the Max Planck Institute of Biogeochemistry for their support in project coordination. Specifically, we are grateful to A. Boener for artwork, and Y. Hofman and A. Thuille for administrative support throughout the project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Consortia
Contributions
E.D.S. coordinated the project, P.C. was responsible for assembling grassland and cropland syntheses, coordinating the atmospheric measurements and inverse model synthesis, S.L. was responsible for assembling the forest synthesis and the uncertainty analysis, A.F. contributed GHG data, I.A.J. developed the ecosystem flow chart, J.F.S., P.S. and J.G. were responsible for the grassland, cropland and forest data respectively, I.L. and B.T. contributed the fossil fuel emission data, G.E. contributed the geological data, M.H., P.B., P.P., W.P. and C.R. contributed inversion modelling results, A.J.D. contributed with regionalization of continental fluxes, R.V. was responsible for the eddy-flux network, J.G.N. contributed the forest inventory data, M.W. and N.V. contributed spatial data of N2O and CH4 in agriculture, Z.P. and J.N. prepared the regional maps, E.D.S., I.A.J., S.L. and J.H.G. wrote the text.
E. D. Schulze1, S. Luyssaert2, 3, P. Ciais2, A. Freibauer4, I. A. Janssens3, J. F. Soussana5, P. Smith6, J. Grace7, I. Levin8, B. Thiruchittampalam9, M. Heimann1, A. J. Dolman10, R. Valentini11, P. Bousquet2, P. Peylin2, W. Peters12, C. Rödenbeck1, G. Etiope13, N. Vuichard2, M. Wattenbach6, G. J. Nabuurs15, Z. Poussi2, J. Nieschulze1, J. H. Gash10, 14, and the CarboEurope Team16
Corresponding author
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Information (PDF 535 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schulze, E., Luyssaert, S., Ciais, P. et al. Importance of methane and nitrous oxide for Europe's terrestrial greenhouse-gas balance. Nature Geosci 2, 842–850 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo686
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo686
This article is cited by
-
The role of wood harvest from sustainably managed forests in the carbon cycle
Annals of Forest Science (2022)
-
Global changes alter the amount and composition of land carbon deliveries to European rivers and seas
Communications Earth & Environment (2022)
-
The role of net ecosystem productivity and of inventories in climate change research: the need for “net ecosystem productivity with harvest”, NEPH
Forest Ecosystems (2021)
-
Climate warming from managed grasslands cancels the cooling effect of carbon sinks in sparsely grazed and natural grasslands
Nature Communications (2021)
-
Magnitudes and environmental drivers of greenhouse gas emissions from natural wetlands in China based on unbiased data
Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2021)