Background

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The magnitude of climate change is dependent on the atmospheric load of the two most important greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane. The terrestrial biosphere plays an important role in the global carbon balance, and boreal forests and peatlands are an important part of the global carbon cycle. Global carbon balance of the terrestrial ecosystems is known in an accuracy of about +-35% based on atmospheric concentration increase and versatile use of other observational and modeling methods.

• The uncertainty increases in the regional level, and obtaining accurate figures of country based carbon balances and their future development is a challenge.

The climate is changing rapidly in arctic and subarctic regions with projected annual mean temperature increase of about 2-6°C from year 2000 until year 2100.

• The northern carbon balances are thus subject to both positive and negative alterations, depending on the temporal and spatial climate variation. A regional approach is needed in order to examine these issues.

Wetlands cover about one third of the territory of Finland. They are important for boreal greenhouse gas balances due to methane emissions.

• The magnitude and future development of wetland emissions is not yet fully understood.