Abstract
Abstract. The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) compiles anthropogenic emissions data for greenhouse gases (GHGs), and for multiple air pollutants, based on international statistics and emission factors. EDGAR data provide quantitative support for atmospheric modelling and for mitigation scenario and impact assessment analyses as well as for policy evaluation. The new version (v4.3.2) of the EDGAR emission inventory provides global estimates, broken down to IPCC-relevant source-sector levels, from 1970 (the year of the European Union's first Air Quality Directive) to 2012 (the end year of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, KP). Strengths of EDGAR v4.3.2 include global geo-coverage (226 countries), continuity in time, and comprehensiveness in activities. Emissions of multiple chemical compounds, GHGs as well as air pollutants, from relevant sources (fossil fuel activities but also, for example, fermentation processes in agricultural activities) are compiled following a bottom-up (BU), transparent and IPCC-compliant methodology. This paper describes EDGAR v4.3.2 developments with respect to three major long-lived GHGs (CO2, CH4, and N2O) derived from a wide range of human activities apart from the land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector and apart from savannah burning; a companion paper quantifies and discusses emissions of air pollutants. Detailed information is included for each of the IPCC-relevant source sectors, leading to global totals for 2010 (in the middle of the first KP commitment period) (with a 95 % confidence interval in parentheses): 33.6(±5.9) Pg CO2 yr−1, 0.34(±0.16) Pg CH4 yr−1, and 7.2(±3.7) Tg N2O yr−1. We provide uncertainty factors in emissions data for the different GHGs and for three different groups of countries: OECD countries of 1990, countries with economies in transition in 1990, and the remaining countries in development (the UNFCCC non-Annex I parties). We document trends for the major emitting countries together with the European Union in more detail, demonstrating that effects of fuel markets and financial instability have had greater impacts on GHG trends than effects of income or population. These data (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2658138, Janssens-Maenhout et al., 2019) are visualised with annual and monthly global emissions grid maps of 0.1∘×0.1∘ for each source sector.
Highlights
The scientific community started to bring together these anthropogenic BU emissions with top-down estimates covering the natural component to obtain the Global Carbon Budget (GCB) (Le Quéré et al, 2018) and the Global Methane Budget (Saunois et al, 2016)
In line with the ESSD guidelines of Carlson and Oda (2018), we aim with this publication for free open access to all calculated data, and for a complete documentation of the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) v4 products that has been compiled in a transparent way to the extent possible
The EDGAR v4.3.2 scientific global emission inventory database provides a comprehensive dataset of anthropogenic emissions of CO2, CH4 and N2O in time series 1970–2012 and spatially disaggregated grid maps with 0.1◦ × 0.1◦ resolution
Summary
The scientific community started to bring together these anthropogenic BU emissions with top-down estimates covering the natural component to obtain the Global Carbon Budget (GCB) (Le Quéré et al, 2018) and the Global Methane Budget (Saunois et al, 2016). To support both science and policy making with the monitoring and verification of the GHG emissions, it is important. Other EDGAR v4 air pollutants inventories are EDGAR v4.3.1 (Crippa et al, 2016a; Huang et al, 2017), EDGAR v4tox (Muntean et al, 2014) and EDGAR v4tox (Muntean et al, 2018)
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