'The « boundless » global carbon budget' by Dr. Pierre Regnier
Dr. Pierre Regnier's short biography:
Dr. Pierre Regnier is Professor of Earth System Science, co-director of the research group « Biogeochemistry and Modelling of the Earth System (BGEOSYS) » and Vice- Chair of the Department of Geosciences at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.
As a biogeochemical modeller, his research focuses on the anthropogenic perturbation of the global carbon cycle with a strong focus on inland water, estuaries and coastal environments.
His expertise encompasses biogeochemistry of carbon and nutrients, CO2 and methane cycling, reactive-transport modelling and modelling of land-ocean interactions..
Dr. Pierre Regnier's personal homepage
Lecture's abstract - 'The « boundless » global carbon budget':
The first part of this lecture provides a brief assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Era. An understanding of this perturbation budget over time is necessary to understand the response of natural terrestrial and ocean carbon sinks to changes in anthropogenic drivers and to assess future climate change for given CO2 emission scenarios.
The second part of this lecture investigates how the anthropogenic perturbation to carbon cycling in terrestrial freshwaters, estuaries, and coastal areas modifies our analysis of the global CO2 budget. This perturbation along the land to ocean aquatic continuum (LOAC), currently omitted in the syntheses performed by the Global Carbon Project and the IPCC, affects the estimates of terrestrial and oceanic carbon sinks as well as atmospheric CO2 and climate projections.
Recommended background publication on this presentation:
Regnier, P., Friedlingstein, P., Ciais, P., Mackenzie, F. T., Gruber, N., Janssens, I. A., … Thullner, M.: Anthropogenic perturbation of the carbon fluxes from land to ocean. Nature Geoscience, 6(8), 597–607, (2013). Doi:10.1038/ngeo1830.