Global Carbon Budget - Tracking the World's CO2 Emissions

​The Global Carbon Budget (GCB) provides an annual, scientifically based inventory of global CO₂ emissions and their distribution in the atmosphere, oceans, and land ecosystems. It shows how much CO₂ is released from the use of fossil fuels and from land-use changes, and what this means for achieving international climate targets. The GCB is compiled by over 100 researchers from 70 institutions in 18 countries, coordinated by the Global Carbon Project. It analyses current emission trends, identifies gaps in climate protection, and assesses progress toward climate neutrality, for example within the framework of the Paris Agreement.

Prof. Dr. Julia Pongratz and Dr. Clemens Schwingshackl are part of the GCB core team, where they are primarily responsible for coordinating the land-use component—CO₂ emissions from land use (E_LUC), such as deforestation, reforestation, or agricultural use. They coordinate the evaluation of data sets contributed by various international research groups and assess the impact of land-use emissions on climate protection.

In addition, the chair contributes its own simulations to the budget: on the one hand, with the semi-empirical bookkeeping model BLUE to determine land-use emissions and, on the other hand, with the dynamic global vegetation model JSBACH to determine natural CO₂ uptake by land ecosystems (S_LAND). These contributions help to record the global carbon balance more accurately – as a basis for evidence-based climate policy.