BEIJING, 17th March, 2023 (WAM) — Chinese researchers found that biomass-burning emissions could lead to a global CO2 concentration increase of 2.4 ppm annually, exceeding the annual net increase of global atmospheric CO2 concentration, according to a paper published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

The finding is based on four different biomass-burning emission inventories.

Biomass burning has substantial spatiotemporal variabilities, contributing significantly to the dynamics of global CO2 distributions and variances, Chinese news agency, Xinhua, quoted Shi Yusheng, an associate researcher at the Aerospace Information Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as saying.

He noted that quantifying the impacts of biomass-burning emissions on atmospheric CO2 concentrations is essential for global and regional carbon cycles and budgets.

The research team led by Shi performed several numerical experiments by switching and replacing inventories to estimate the impacts of four biomass-burning emission inventories on atmospheric CO2 concentration simulations between 2006-2010 based on the global chemical transport model, the GEOS-Chem. They also combined ground-based observation and satellite data verification to improve the simulation accuracy of the model.

Also, the impact of biomass-burning emissions on CO2 concentrations has significant seasonal changes, and the sensitivity of CO2 concentration to biomass-burning emission inventories in different regions is also different.