Lateral Accounting of Transport in Terrestrial Ecosystems (LATTE): A High‐Resolution Global Land‐Atmosphere CO 2 Flux Data Set From 1961 to 2022 for Atmospheric Inversions and Carbon Budgeting Studies

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Lateral transport of terrestrial carbon—via harvested biomass, bioenergy supply chains, and riverine export—redistributes atmospheric CO 2 uptake and subsequent CO 2 emissions across space and time, complicating regional carbon budgeting and atmospheric inversion estimates. We present Lateral Accounting of Transport in Terrestrial Ecosystems (LATTE), a high‐resolution (5 arc‐min) global gridded data set of annual land‐atmosphere CO 2 fluxes attributable to lateral carbon transfers for 1961–2022. LATTE quantifies paired CO 2 sinks at production locations and compensatory CO 2 sources at receptor locations, for four major lateral transport mechanisms: (a) crop harvest, trade, and consumption; (b) industrial roundwood harvest, trade, and storage in harvested wood product pools with country‐specific decay and delayed emissions, (c) biofuel production, and use, including crop biofuels and fuelwood; and (d) the inland water carbon transport loop, including soil‐to‐river leaching, river and lake CO 2 evasion, aquatic burial, and export to the ocean. National production and trade statistics and biofuel energy balances are converted to carbon units and downscaled using satellite net primary productivity, forest carbon removal maps, population density, livestock distributions, and gridded biofuel combustion proxies. Inland water fluxes are based on published climatology with basin‐scale mass balancing across major river basins. Example maps illustrate distinct spatial patterns of sinks and sources associated with crop products, wood products, biofuels, and inland waters, with global totals consistent with previous assessments. LATTE enables improved representation of lateral carbon transport in atmospheric inversions and supports spatially explicit regional and national carbon budget analyses.