On average, about 45 per cent of global annual anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions remain in the atmosphere, while the remainder are taken up by carbon reservoirs on land and in the oceans—the CO2 ‘sinks’. As sink size and dynamics are highly variable in space and time, cross-verification of reported anthropogenic CO2 emissions with atmospheric CO2 measurements is challenging. Highly variable CO2 sinks also limit the capability to detect anomolous changes in natural carbon reservoirs. This paper argues that significant uncertainty reduction in annual estimates of the global carbon balance could be achieved rapidly through coordinated up-scaling of existing methods, and that this uncertainty reduction would provide incentive for accurate reporting of CO2 emissions at the country level. We estimate that if 5 per cent of global CO2 emissions go unreported and undetected, the associated marginal economic impacts could reach approximately US$20 billion each year by 2050. The net present day value of these impacts aggregated until 2200, and discounted back to the present would have a mean value exceeding US$10 trillion. The costs of potential impacts of unreported emissions far outweigh the costs of enhancement of measurement infrastructure to reduce uncertainty in the global carbon balance. \ud\ud
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机译:平均而言,全球每年人为二氧化碳(CO2)排放量中约有45%保留在大气中,而其余的则由陆上和海洋中的碳库(CO2的“汇”)吸收。由于汇的大小和动力学在空间和时间上变化很大,报告的人为CO2排放与大气CO2测量值的交叉验证具有挑战性。高度可变的CO2汇也限制了检测天然碳储集层异常变化的能力。本文认为,通过协调提高现有方法的规模,可以迅速实现全球碳平衡年度估算中的显着不确定性降低,而这种不确定性降低将为在国家一级准确报告二氧化碳排放提供动力。我们估计,如果不报告和检测不到全球5%的二氧化碳排放量,到2050年,相关的边际经济影响每年可能达到约200亿美元。这些影响的净现值累计到2200年,并折算到现在。平均价值将超过10万亿美元。未报告排放的潜在影响的成本远远超过增强测量基础设施以减少全球碳平衡不确定性的成本。 \ ud \ ud
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