Airborne fraction

Airborne fraction

The airborne fraction is a scaling factor defined as the ratio of the annual increase in atmospheric chem|CO|2 to the chem|CO|2 emissions from anthropogenic sources Forster, P, V Ramaswamy, P Artaxo, "et al." (2007) Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange [Solomon, S. "et al." (eds.)] . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK & New York, USA. [http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter2.pdf] ] . The fraction averages about 50-60%, meaning that approximately half the human-emitted chem|CO|2 is rapidly absorbed by ocean and land surfaces. There is some evidence for a recent increase in airborne fraction [http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0702737104v1.pdf] , which would imply a faster increase in atmospheric chem|CO|2 for a given rate of human fossil-fuel burning.

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