Emissions - Biomass Fires CCI

Parameter 

Annual greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2eq) from biomass fires


Represented range

Forest -  Annual greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2e) from biomass fires:  1.5- 1.9 kt CO2e

CroplandAnnual greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2e) from biomass fires:  0-1 kt CO2e

Grassland Annual greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2e) from biomass fires:  0-0.02 kt CO2e

Other Annual greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2e) from biomass fires:  0-0.1 kt CO2e

Description 

Annual greenhouse gas emissions (in CO2eq) from biomass fires. Biomass fire emissions are obtained using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier 1 methods on fire emissions (IPCC, 2006, Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories). Global emissions from biomass fires are computed for each pixel by multiplying the area burnt by the consumption value of the fuel biomass available in the pixel. The applied consumption value is a function of the climate zone and vegetation type prevailing in the pixel. Emissions are finally computed multiplying the biomass burnt in each pixel by the emission factors of each greenhouse gas (CO2, CH4 and N2O). The area burnt is obtained from the MODIS burned area monthly dataset (MCD64A1 v6) which contains observations of burnt areas at about 500 meter resolution. The vegetation type is derived from the Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Land Cover dataset which contains annual land cover data produced by the European Space Agency (ESA). Two climatic layers, the FAO Global Ecological Zones (GEZ; FAO, 2012) and the IPCC climate zones, developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (2010) were used to subdivide the land cover classes into classes that match those described in the IPCC Guidelines. The final global dataset shown here is the sum of the N2O, CH4 (converted to CO2 equivalent using the global warming potential from the IPCC Assessment Report 5) and CO2 emission estimates for every year from 2001 until 2020. For simplification, emissions are visualised by the IPCC land use/land cover categories Cropland, Grassland and Forest although all details are available upon download. Units: kilotonnes. Pixel size: 500 x 500 m

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Source data

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

FAOSTAT Burning Biomass

Description 

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from burning of biomass consist of methane and nitrous oxide gases from biomass combustion of forest land cover classes ‘Humid and Tropical Forest’ and ‘Other Forests’, and of methane and carbon dioxide emissions from combustion of organic soils. The FAOSTAT emissions database is computed following Tier 1 IPCC 2006 Guidelines for National GHG Inventories (http://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/vol4.html). All geospatial data are accessed and processed within the geospatial cloud platform Google Earth Engine (GEE) and statistics were aggregated at country level, using the FAO Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) dataset (last available version 2015). GHG emissions are provided by country, with global coverage, relative to the period 1990-present (with annual updates), expressed as Gg CH4, Gg N2O, Gg CO2, Gg CO2eq and Gg CO2eq from both CH4 and N2O, by land cover class (humid tropical forest, other forest, organic soils) and by aggregate (burning - all categories). Implied emission factors for N2O, CH4 and CO2 as well activity data (burned area and biomass burned) are also provided. While country data on organic soils fires are disseminated for each country, due to the high uncertainty of these estimates they are used in country totals of anthropogenic emissions from biomass burning (and hence in total national, regional and global land use emissions estimates) only for Southern Asian countries, where their magnitude and trends over time are well documented. 

Spatial resolution

Global coverage

Pixel size:

500 m x 500 m

Temporal resolution

2001 - 2020