Search

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) estimates the human-induced emission rates on Earth. EDGAR collaborates with atmospheric modelling activities and aids policy in the design of mitigation strategies and in evaluating their effectiveness. In these applications, the uncertainty estimate is an essential component, as it quantifies the accuracy and qualifies the level of confidence in the emission. This study complements the EDGAR emissions inventory by providing an estimation of the structural uncertainty stemming from its base components (activity data, AD, statistics and emission factors, EFs) by (i) associating uncertainty to each AD and EF characterizing the emissions of the three main greenhouse gases (GHGs), namely carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O); (ii) combining them; and (iii) making assumptions regarding the cross-country uncertainty aggregation of source categories. It was deemed a natural choice to obtain the uncertainties in EFs and AD statistics from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines issued in 2006 (with a few exceptions), as the EF and AD sources and methodological aspects used by EDGAR have been built over the years based on the IPCC recommendations, which assured consistency in time and comparability across countries. On the one hand, the homogeneity of the method is one of the key strengths of EDGAR, on the other hand, it facilitates the propagation of uncertainties when similar emission sources are aggregated. For this reason, this study aims primarily at addressing the aggregation of uncertainties' sectorial emissions across GHGs and countries. Globally, we find that the anthropogenic emissions covered by EDGAR for the combined three main GHGs for the year 2015 are accurate within an interval of −15 % to +20 % (defining the 95 % confidence of a log-normal distribution). The most uncertain emissions are those related to N2O from waste and agriculture, while CO2 emissions, although responsible for 74 % of the total GHG emissions, account for approximately 11 % of global uncertainty share. The sensitivity to methodological choices is also discussed.

The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) estimates the human-induced emission rates on Earth collaborating with atmospheric modelling activities as well as aiding policy in the design of mitigation strategies and in evaluating their effectiveness. In these applications, the uncertainty estimate is an essential component as it quantifies the accuracy and qualifies the level of confidence in the emission. This study complements the EDGAR's emissions inventory with estimation of the structural uncertainty stemming from its base components (activity data statistics (AD) and emission factors (EF)) by i) associating uncertainty to each AD and EF characterizing the emissions of the three main greenhouse gases (GHG) CO2, CH4 and N2O; ii) combining them, and iii) making assumptions for the cross-country uncertainty aggregation of source categories. It was deemed a natural choice to obtain the uncertainties in EFs and AD from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines issued in 2006 (with a few exceptions), since the EF and AD sources and methodological aspects used by EDGAR have been built over the years based on the IPCC recommendations, which assured consistency in time and comparability across countries. While on one side the homogeneity of the method is one of the key strengths of EDGAR, on the other side it facilitates the propagation of uncertainties when similar emission sources are aggregated. For this reason, this study aims primarily at addressing the aggregation of uncertainties sectorial emissions across GHGs and countries. On global average we find that the anthropogenic emissions of the combined three main GHGs for the year 2015 are accurate within an interval of −15 % to +20 % (defining the 95 % confidence of a log-normal distribution). The most uncertain emissions are those related to N2O from agriculture, while CO2 emissions, although responsible for 74 % of total GHG emissions, accounts for and for approximately 11 % of global uncertainty share. Sensitivity to methodological choices is also discussed.

Emissions into the atmosphere from human activities show marked temporal variations, from inter-annual to hourly levels. The consolidated practice of calculating yearly emissions follows the same temporal allocation of the underlying annual statistics. However, yearly emissions might not reflect heavy pollution episodes, seasonal trends, or any time-dependant atmospheric process. This study develops high-time resolution profiles for air pollutants and greenhouse gases co- emitted by anthropogenic sources in support of atmospheric modelling, Earth observation communities and decision makers. The key novelties of the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) temporal profiles are the development of (i) country/region- and sector- specific yearly profiles for all sources, (ii) time dependent yearly profiles for sources with inter-annual variability of their seasonal pattern, (iii) country- specific weekly and daily profiles to represent hourly emissions, (iv) a flexible system to compute hourly emissions including input from different users. This work creates a harmonized emission temporal distribution to be applied to any emission database as input for atmospheric models, thus promoting homogeneity in inter-comparison exercises., Measurement(s)air pollution • greenhouse gas • temporal measurementTechnology Type(s)computational modeling techniqueFactor Type(s)sector • geographic locationSample Characteristic - Environmentclimate systemSample Characteristic - LocationEarth (planet) Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data: 10.6084/m9.figshare.12052887

Emission inventories of greenhouse gases built up from international statistics of human-related activities and emission factors (often referred to as ‘bottom-up’ inventories) are at the core of emission trend analysis to inform policy actions and scientific applications, to support climate negotiation and pledges for mitigation options.Increasingly gaining importance is the quantification of the inherent uncertainty of these inventories that could allow moving towards a verification system in support of the enhanced transparency framework of the Paris Agreement, in particular the global stocktakes. Recently, two H2020 projects – CHE (CO2 Human Emissions) and VERIFY – are focusing on this sensible aspect. This paper produces an unprecedented propagation of uncertainty applied to emissions of CO2, CH4 and N2O, impinging in both projects. Starting from the human emission estimates of the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), which encompasses historic and sectoral emissions from all world countries and using the error propagation method, uncertainties of the CO2, CH4 and N2O emissions were computed per sector and country.The devised methodology applies uncertainty stemming from statistics of human activity and emission factors using the guidelines of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2006). The analysis takes into consideration the accuracy of emission estimates for developed versus developing countries, correlation arising from sector aggregation, and includes an ad-hoc treatment for specific sources and country specific emission factors. The results of emissions and their uncertainties are available for all world countries and all IPCC/EDGAR sectors, and for each country, the share of the total uncertainty each sector is responsible for, is identified.Our results show that world-wide CO2, CH4 and N2O emissions lies in a confidence range of 5%, 33% and in excess of 100%, respectively. The sectors most responsible for such uncertainty depend strongly on the statistical infrastructure of the country but we observe in general that few sectors with smaller emission total are contributing to a large proportion of the total uncertainty.This global uncertainty assessment aims at contributing to the European initiative of the CO2 Monitoring Task Force, building up an operational greenhouse gas monitoring and verification support capacity.

During the last 30 years, the global energy sector has undergone through significant transformation, delivering a considerably larger electricity output whilst attempting to reduce air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. The international community has tackled this challenging dilemma by implementing different kind of policies and by encouraging several types of technological changes; including the partial replacement of coal and liquid fossil fuels by low carbon energy vectors (natural gas and renewable sources), the incorporation of more efficient power trains (natural gas fired combined cycles and supercritical coal fired plants) and the deployment of primary and secondary treatment processes for limiting air pollutant concentration in flue gases.EDGAR is a unique global emission database due to its high sectorial, technological and geographical coverage; reporting greenhouse and air pollutant emission time series (1970-nowadays) in a very detailed way. Research is currently being conducted, aimed at updating the energy conversion and end of pipe processes so that the quantified emissions can better reflect the latest global and regional changes. By using EDGAR new data, it is possible to evaluate the impact of technology and regulatory frameworks on air pollutant emissions as well as to identify possible co-benefits and trade off associated with climate change mitigation policies for the energy industries.This work is intended to study the drivers for greenhouse and air pollutant emission trends within this sector - both in large emitting developed and developing economies; by focusing on the role of demand increase, on the penetration of non-fossil sources and specially on the incorporation of more efficient power islands, combustion and air pollutant abatement units.

Over the last three decades, socio-economic, demographic and technological transitions have been witnessed throughout the world, modifying both sectorial and geographical distributions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Understanding these trends is central to the design of current and future climate change mitigation policies, requiring up-to-date methodologically robust emission inventories such as the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), the European Commission’s in-house, independent global emission inventory. EDGAR is a key tool to track the evolution of GHG emissions and contributes to quantifying the global carbon budget, providing independent and systematically calculated emissions for all countries. According to the results of the EDGAR v.5.0 release, total anthropogenic global greenhouse gas emissions (excluding land use, land use change and forestry) were estimated at 49.1 Gt CO2eq in 2015, 50 % higher than in 1990, despite a monotonic decrease in GHG emissions per unit of economic output. Between 1990 and 2015, emissions from developed countries fell by 9%, while emissions from low to medium income countries increased by 130%, predominantly from 2000 onwards. The 27 Member States of the European Union and the United Kingdom led the pathway for emission reductions in industrialised economies whilst, in developing countries, the rise in emissions was driven by higher emissions in China, India, Brazil and nations in the South-East Asian region. This diversity of patterns shows how different patterns for GHG emissions are and the need for identifying regionally tailored emission reduction measures.

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 (Janssens-Maenhout et al., 2017). 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 103 Mt, CO from 441 to 562 Mt, NOx from 68 to 122 Mt, NMVOC from 119 to 170 Mt, NH3 from 25 to 59 Mt, PM10 from 37 to 65 Mt, PM2.5 from 24 to 41 Mt, BC from 2.7 to 4.5 Mt, and OC from 9 to 11 Mt. 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. The comparison with other global inventories, such as the Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution Inventory (HTAP v2.2) and the Community Emission Data System (CEDS), reveals insights on the uncertainties as well as the impact of data revisions (e.g. activity data, emission factors, etc.). As an additional metric, we analyze the emission ratios of some pollutants to CO2 (e.g. CO∕CO2, NOx∕CO2, NOx∕CO, and SO2∕CO2) by sector, region, and time to identify any decoupling of air pollutant emissions from energy production activities and to demonstrate the potential of such ratios to compare to satellite-derived emission data. Gridded emissions are also made available for the 1970–2012 historic time series, disaggregated for 26 anthropogenic sectors using updated spatial proxies. The analysis of the evolution of hot spots over time allowed us to identify areas with growing emissions and where emissions should be constrained to improve global air quality (e.g. China, India, the Middle East, and some South American countries are often characterized by high emitting areas that are changing rapidly compared to Europe or the USA, where stable or decreasing emissions are evaluated). Sector- and component-specific contributions to grid-cell emissions may help the modelling and satellite communities to disaggregate atmospheric column amounts and concentrations into main emitting sectors. This work addresses not only the emission inventory and modelling communities, but also aims to broaden the usefulness of information available in a global emission inventory such as EDGAR to also include the measurement community. Data are publicly available online through the EDGAR website http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/overview.php?v=432_AP and registered under https://doi.org/10.2904/JRC_DATASET_EDGAR.

The Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) provides a time-series of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived atmospheric pollutants from 1970 to 2008. Mercury is included in EDGARv4.tox1, thereby enriching the spectrum of multi-pollutant sources in the database. With an average annual growth rate of 1.3% since 1970, EDGARv4 estimates that the global mercury emissions reached 1287 tonnes in 2008. Specifically, gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) (Hg[superscript 0]) accounted for 72% of the global total emissions, while gaseous oxidised mercury (GOM) (Hg[superscript 2 +]) and particle bound mercury (PBM) (Hg-P) accounted for only 22% and 6%, respectively. The less reactive form, i.e., Hg[superscript 0], has a long atmospheric residence time and can be transported long distances from the emission sources. The artisanal and small-scale gold production, accounted for approximately half of the global Hg[superscript 0] emissions in 2008 followed by combustion (29%), cement production (12%) and other metal industry (10%). Given the local-scale impacts of mercury, special attention was given to the spatial distribution showing the emission hot-spots on gridded 0.1° × 0.1° resolution maps using detailed proxy data. The comprehensive ex-post analysis of the mitigation of mercury emissions by end-of-pipe abatement measures in the power generation sector and technology changes in the chlor-alkali industry over four decades indicates reductions of 46% and 93%, respectively. Combined, the improved technologies and mitigation measures in these sectors accounted for 401.7 tonnes of avoided mercury emissions in 2008. A comparison shows that EDGARv4 anthropogenic emissions are nearly equivalent to the lower estimates of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)'s mercury emissions inventory for 2005 for most sectors. An evaluation of the EDGARv4 global mercury emission inventory, including mercury speciation, was performed using the GEOS-Chem global 3-D mercury model. The model can generally reproduce both spatial variations and long-term trends in total gaseous mercury concentrations and wet deposition fluxes., National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Atmospheric Chemistry Program Grant 1053648)

Book Review of Verifying Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Methods to Support International Climate Agreements, by the Committee on Methods for Estimating Greenhouse Gas Emissions (2011) National Research Council, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, JRC.H.2-Air and Climate