Abstract
Abstract. Decadal trends in the atmospheric abundances of carbon tetrafluoride (CF4) and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) have been well characterised and have provided a time series of global total emissions. Information on locations of emissions contributing to the global total, however, is currently poor. We use a unique set of measurements between 2008 and 2015 from the Gosan station, Jeju Island, South Korea (part of the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment network), together with an atmospheric transport model, to make spatially disaggregated emission estimates of these gases in East Asia. Due to the poor availability of good prior information for this study, our emission estimates are largely influenced by the atmospheric measurements. Notably, we are able to highlight emission hotspots of NF3 and CF4 in South Korea due to the measurement location. We calculate emissions of CF4 to be quite constant between the years 2008 and 2015 for both China and South Korea, with 2015 emissions calculated at 4.3±2.7 and 0.36±0.11 Gg yr−1, respectively. Emission estimates of NF3 from South Korea could be made with relatively small uncertainty at 0.6±0.07 Gg yr−1 in 2015, which equates to ∼1.6 % of the country's CO2 emissions. We also apply our method to calculate emissions of CHF3 (HFC-23) between 2008 and 2012, for which our results find good agreement with other studies and which helps support our choice in methodology for CF4 and NF3.
Highlights
The major greenhouse gases (GHGs) – carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – have natural and anthropogenic sources
Fang et al (2015) conducted a very thorough bottom-up study within their work on HFC-23, constraining an inversion model using both prior information and atmospheric measurements. They used an inverse method based on the FLEXible PARTicle dispersion model (FLEXPART) using measurements from three sites in East Asia – GSN, Hateruma, and Cape Ochiishi, calculating an HFC-23 emission rise in China from 6.4 ± 0.7 Gg yr−1 in 2007 (6.2 ± 0.6 Gg yr−1 in 2008) to 8.8 ± 0.8 Gg yr−1 in 2012
We assume a very high level of uncertainty on our prior emissions, and our posterior uncertainties are significantly higher. These inversion result estimates are lower than estimates based on interspecies correlation analysis by Li et al (2011) who calculated emissions of HFC-23 from China in 2008 in the range of 7.2–13 Gg yr−1
Summary
The major greenhouse gases (GHGs) – carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – have natural and anthropogenic sources. Tetrafluoromethane (CF4) and NF3 are emitted nearly exclusively from point sources of specialised industries (Arnold et al, 2013; Mühle et al, 2010, Worton et al, 2007) These species currently make up only a small percentage of current emissions contributing to global radiative forcing, they have potential to form large portions of specific company, sector, state, province, or even country level GHG budgets. Active or passive activities to reduce emissions vary between countries, and between industries and companies within countries, and the impetus to accurately understand emissions is lacking in regions that have not been required to report emissions under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) This problem is compounded by the difficulty in making measurements of these gases: CF4 and NF3 are the two most volatile GHGs after methane, and have very low atmospheric abundances, which makes routine measurements in the field at the required precision difficult. The technology for abating emissions of these gases from such discrete sources exists and could be used (Chang and Chang, 2006; Purohit and Höglund-Isaksson, 2017; Illuzzi and Thewissen, 2010; Yang et al, 2009; Raoux, 2007; Wangxing et al, 2016)
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