Gridded emissions of air pollutants for the period 1970–2012 within EDGAR v4.3.2

The new version of the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR v4.3.2) compiles gaseous and particulate air pollutant emissions, making use of the same anthropogenic sectors, time period (1970–2012), and international activity data that is used for estimating GHG emissions, as described in a companion paper. All human activities, except large scale biomass burning and land use, land-use change, and forestry are included in the emissions calculation. The bottom-up compilation methodology of sector-specific emissions was applied consistently for all world countries, providing methodological transparency and comparability between countries. In addition to the activity data used to estimate GHG emissions, air pollutant emissions are determined by the process technology and end-of-pipe emission reduction abatements. Region-specific emission factors and abatement measures were selected from recent available scientific literature and reports.

Compared to previous versions of EDGAR, the EDGAR v4.3.2 dataset covers all gaseous and particulate air pollutants, has extended time series (1970–2012), and has been evaluated with quality control and quality assurance (QC and QA) procedures both for the emission time series (e.g. particulate matter – PM – mass balance, gap-filling for missing data, the split-up of countries over time, few updates in the emission factors, etc.) and grid maps (full coverage of the world, complete mapping of EDGAR emissions with sector-specific proxies, etc.). This publication focuses on the gaseous air pollutants of CO, NOx, SO2, total non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs), NH3, and the aerosols PM10, PM2.5, black carbon (BC), and organic carbon (OC).

Considering the 1970–2012 time period, global emissions of SO2 increased from 99 to 103Mt, CO from 441 to 562Mt, NOx from 68 to 122Mt, NMVOC from 119 to 170Mt, NH3 from 25 to 59Mt, PM10 from 37 to 65Mt, PM2.5 from 24 to 41Mt, BC from 2.7 to 4.5Mt, and OC from 9 to 11Mt. We present the country-specific emission totals and analyze the larger emitting countries (including the European Union) to provide insights on major sector contributions. In addition, per capita and per GDP emissions and implied emission factors – the apparent emissions per unit of production or energy consumption – are presented. We find that the implied emission factors (EFs) are higher for low-income countries compared to high-income countries, but in both cases decrease from 1970 to 2012.

Authors

PBL Authors
Jos Olivier
Other authors
Monica Crippa
Diego Guizzardi
Marilena Muntean
Edwin Schaaf
Frank Dentener
John A. van Aardenne
Suvi Monni
Ulrike Doering
Valerio Pagliar
Greet Janssens-Maenhout

Specifications

Publication title
Gridded emissions of air pollutants for the period 1970–2012 within EDGAR v4.3.2
Publication date
26 October 2018
Publication type
Article
Publication language
English
Magazine
Earth Syst. Sci. Data
Issue
10, 1987-2013, 2018
Product number
3620