In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, the authors found that despite the major financial crisis that hit the world last year, global CO₂ emissions from the burning of fossil fuel in 2009 were only 1.3% below the record 2008 figures. This is less than half the drop predicted a year ago.

The global financial crisis severely affected western economies, leading to large reductions in CO₂ emissions. For example, UK emissions were 8.6% lower in 2009 than in 2008. Similar figures apply to USA, Japan, France, Germany, and most other industrialized nations. However, emerging economies had a strong economic performance despite the financial crisis, and recorded substantial increases in CO₂ emissions (e.g. China +8%, India +6.2%).

The 2009 drop in CO₂ emissions is less than half that anticipated a year ago. This is because the drop in world Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was less than anticipated and the carbon intensity of world GDP, which is the amount of CO₂ released per unit of GDP, improved by only 0.7% in 2009—well below its long-term average of 1.7% per year.

—Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, lead author of the research

The poor improvements in carbon intensity were caused by an increased share of fossil-fuel CO₂ emissions produced by emerging economies with a relatively high carbon intensity, and an increasing reliance on coal.

The study projects that if economic growth proceeds as expected, global fossil fuel emissions will increase by more than 3% in 2010, approaching the high emissions growth rates observed through 2000 to 2008.

The study also found that global CO₂ emissions from deforestation have decreased by over 25% since 2000 compared to the 1990s, mainly because of reduced CO₂ emissions from tropical deforestation.

For the first time, forest expansion in temperate latitudes has overcompensated deforestation emissions and caused a small net sink of CO₂ outside the tropics. We could be seeing the first signs of net CO₂ sequestration in the forest sector outside the tropics.

—Professor Corinne Le Quéré, University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey

The Global Carbon Project was formed to assist the international science community to establish a common, mutually agreed knowledge base supporting policy debate and action to slow the rate of increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The project is working towards this through a shared partnership between the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP), the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and Diversitas. This partnership constitutes the Earth Systems Science Partnership (ESSP).

Resources

• P. Friedlingstein, R. A. Houghton, G. Marland, J. Hackler, T. A. Boden, T. J. Conway, J. G. Canadell, M. R. Raupach, P. Ciais & C. Le Quéré (2010) Update on CO₂ emissions. Nature Geoscience doi: 10.1038/ngeo1022