Climatic role of terrestrial ecosystem under elevated CO₂ : a bottom-up greenhouse gases budget

The net balance of greenhouse gas (GHG) exchanges between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere under elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂ ) remains poorly understood. Here, we synthesise 1655 measurements from 169 published studies to assess GHGs budget of terrestrial ecosystems under elevated CO₂ . We show that elevated CO₂ significantly stimulates plant C pool (NPP) by 20%, soil CO₂ fluxes by 24%, and methane (CH₄ ) fluxes by 34% from rice paddies and by 12% from natural wetlands, while it slightly decreases CH₄ uptake of upland soils by 3.8%. Elevated CO₂ causes insignificant increases in soil nitrous oxide (N₂ O) fluxes (4.6%), soil organic C (4.3%) and N (3.6%) pools. The elevated CO₂ -induced increase in GHG emissions may decline with CO₂ enrichment levels. An elevated CO₂ -induced rise in soil CH₄ and N₂ O emissions (2.76 Pg CO₂ -equivalent year^-1 ) could negate soil C enrichment (2.42 Pg CO₂ year^-1 ) or reduce mitigation potential of terrestrial net ecosystem production by as much as 69% (NEP, 3.99 Pg CO₂ year^-1 ) under elevated CO₂ . Our analysis highlights that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems to act as a sink to slow climate warming under elevated CO₂ might have been largely offset by its induced increases in soil GHGs source strength.