Emission sources and sinks; trends
On the global scale, during the last decade of the 20th century, deforestation in the tropics and forest regrowth in the temperate zone and parts of the boreal zone remained the major factors responsible for CO2 emissions and removals, respectively (Table TS.12, Figure TS.21). Emissions from deforestation in the 1990s are estimated at 5.8 GtCO2/yr.
However, the extent to which the loss of carbon due to tropical deforestation is offset by expanding forest areas and accumulating woody biomass in the boreal and temperate zone is an area of disagreement between actual land observations and estimates using top-down models. The top-down methods based on inversion of atmospheric transport models estimate the net terrestrial carbon sink for the 1990s, the balance of sinks in northern latitudes and sources in the tropics, to be about 9.5 GtCO2. The new estimates are consistent with the increase previously found in the terrestrial carbon sink in the 1990s over the 1980s, but the new sink estimates and the rate of increase may be smaller than previously reported. The residual sink estimate resulting from inversion of atmospheric transport models is significantly higher than any global sink estimate based on land observations.
The growing understanding of the complexity of the effects of land-surface change on the climate system shows the importance of considering the role of surface albedo, the fluxes of sensible and latent heat, evaporation and other factors in formulating policy for climate change mitigation in the forest sector. Complex modelling tools are needed to fully consider the climatic effect of changing land surface and to manage carbon stocks in the biosphere, but are not yet available. The potential effect of projected climate change on the net carbon balance in forests remains uncertain [9.3; 9.4].
As even the current functioning of the biosphere is uncertain, projecting the carbon balance of the global forestry sector remains very difficult. Generally, there is a lack of widely accepted studies and thus a lack of baselines. Trends for development in non-OECD countries, and thus of the deforestation rate, are unclear. In OECD countries and in economies in transition, development of management trends, the wood market, and impacts of climate change remain unclear. Long-term models as reported in Chapter 3, show baseline CO2 emissions from land-use change and forestry in 2030 that are the same or slightly lower than in 2000 (medium agreement, medium evidence) [9.3; 9.4].