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Reply to: The size of the land carbon sink in China

Nature volume 603, pages E10–E12 (2022)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 16 March 2022

replying to Y. Wang et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04255-y (2022)

In our previously published Article1, we estimated the land biosphere carbon sink across China using global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations that were interpreted using an atmospheric transport model and an inverse method. As described in our study1, we first calculate the net atmospheric flux (a sum of emissions and uptake from natural and anthropogenic sources) and then subtract our best estimate of anthropogenic emissions, following previous studies. We report the resulting net flux from the terrestrial biosphere to the atmosphere, which includes, for example, contributions from forests, grasslands, shrublands, farmland and soils. In the accompanying Comment2, Wang et al. describe three main concerns: that we ascribe our net flux to forest growth without consideration of other ecosystems and lateral fluxes; we do not properly account for orography when considering measurements at the Shangri-La site; and data collected by only seven sites are not sufficient to confidently estimate the Chinese net CO2 flux. We address here each specific comment raised.

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Fig. 1: Atmospheric CO2 mole fractions.
Fig. 2: Terrestrial biosphere CO2 fluxes.

Data availability

CO2 mole fraction data from the Chinese sites used in this study are available at https://doi.org/10.17632/w3bwmr6rfg.1 on http://data.mendeley.com.

Code availability

We used Python Language Reference, version 3.7.7 (Python Software Foundation), available at http://www.python.org. We also used Matplotlib (v3.1.3, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3984190). The community-led GEOS-Chem model of atmospheric chemistry and transport is maintained centrally by Harvard University (http://wiki.seas.harvard.edu/geos-chem) and is available on request. The ensemble Kalman filter code is publicly available as PyOSSE (https://www.nceo.ac.uk/data-tools/atmospheric-tools/).

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Carbon Neutrality Research Center, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jing Wang, Yi Liu & Dongxu Yang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jing Wang, Yi Liu & Dongxu Yang

  3. National Centre for Earth Observation, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Jing Wang, Liang Feng & Paul I. Palmer

  4. School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Jing Wang, Liang Feng & Paul I. Palmer

  5. College of Environment, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, China

    Shuangxi Fang

  6. Meteorological Observation Centre, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, China

    Shuangxi Fang & Lixin Liu

  7. National Centre for Earth Observation, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Hartmut Bösch

  8. Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

    Christopher W. O’Dell

  9. Academy of Forest Inventory and Planning, State Forestry Administration, Beijing, China

    Xiaoping Tang & ChaoZong Xia

Authors
  1. Jing Wang
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  2. Liang Feng
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  3. Paul I. Palmer
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  7. Christopher W. O’Dell
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  8. Xiaoping Tang
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  9. Dongxu Yang
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  10. Lixin Liu
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  11. ChaoZong Xia
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Contributions

P.I.P. and L.F. prepared this response. P.I.P. led the writing of the paper, with contributions from L.F., J.W., Y.L., S.F., H.B., C.W.O’D., X.T., D.Y., L.L. and C.X.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Paul I. Palmer, Yi Liu or Shuangxi Fang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This file contains supplementary text regarding estimating the NEP/NPP ratio.

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Wang, J., Feng, L., Palmer, P.I. et al. Reply to: The size of the land carbon sink in China. Nature 603, E10–E12 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04256-x

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