Abstract
Abstract. We present a case study where emission metric values from different studies are applied to estimate global and Arctic temperature impacts of emissions from a northern European country. This study assesses the climate impact of Finnish air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions from 2000 to 2010, as well as future emissions until 2030. We consider both emission pulses and emission scenarios. The pollutants included are SO2, NOx, NH3, non-methane volatile organic compound (NMVOC), black carbon (BC), organic carbon (OC), CO, CO2, CH4 and N2O, and our study is the first one for Finland to include all of them in one coherent dataset. These pollutants have different atmospheric lifetimes and influence the climate differently; hence, we look at different climate metrics and time horizons. The study uses the global warming potential (GWP and GWP*), the global temperature change potential (GTP) and the regional temperature change potential (RTP) with different timescales for estimating the climate impacts by species and sectors globally and in the Arctic. We compare the climate impacts of emissions occurring in winter and summer. This assessment is an example of how the climate impact of emissions from small countries and sources can be estimated, as it is challenging to use climate models to study the climate effect of national policies in a multi-pollutant situation. Our methods are applicable to other countries and regions and present a practical tool to analyze the climate impacts in multiple dimensions, such as assessing different sectors and mitigation measures. While our study focuses on short-lived climate forcers, we found that the CO2 emissions have the most significant climate impact, and the significance increases over longer time horizons. In the short term, emissions of especially CH4 and BC played an important role as well. The warming impact of BC emissions is enhanced during winter. Many metric choices are available, but our findings hold for most choices.
Highlights
The Paris Agreement and its target of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 ◦C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 ◦C above pre-industrial levels” (UNFCCC, 2015) provides an important framework for individual countries to consider the climate impacts and mitigation possibilities of its emissions
While our study focuses on short-lived climate forcers, we found that the CO2 emissions have the most significant climate impact, and the significance increases over longer time horizons
The objectives of this study were to (1) produce an integrated multi-pollutant emission dataset for Finland for 2000 to 2030, (2) compare multiple climate metrics and assess their suitability for a northern country like Finland, (3) estimate the climate impact of Finnish air pollutants and greenhouse gases for the period 2000 to 2030 utilizing selected climate metrics, and (4) suggest a set of global and regional climate metrics to be used in connection with Finnish short-lived climate forcers (SLCF) emissions
Summary
The Paris Agreement and its target of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 ◦C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 ◦C above pre-industrial levels” (UNFCCC, 2015) provides an important framework for individual countries to consider the climate impacts and mitigation possibilities of its emissions. The climate effect of emission reductions of air pollutants, black carbon and tropospheric ozone, have been a focus of research in last few years (Shindell et al, 2012; Bond et al, 2013; Smith and Mizrahi, 2013; Stohl et al, 2015). Since air pollutants can either cool or warm the climate on different timescales depending on the species, emission reduction policies from a climate perspective have to be designed to take into account the net effect of multiple pollutants (UNEP/WMO, 2011; Stohl et al, 2015). The pollutants considered to have most climate relevance are termed short-lived climate pollutants (SLCP) or short-lived climate forcers (SLCF), depending on the context. In this study we use the terms as in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) special report Global Warming of 1.5 ◦C (IPCC, 2019) where
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