Comparison of Emissions Inventories of Anthropogenic Air Pollutants in Asia

Eri Saikawa1, Cindy L Young2, Hankyul Kim2, Jun-ichi Kurokawa3, Wanyu Zhao4, Greet Georgette Alice Janssens-Maenhout5, Qiang Zhang6 and Toshimasa Ohara7, (1)Emory University, Department of Environmental Sciences, Atlanta, GA, United States, (2)Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States, (3)ACAP Asia Center for Air Pollution Research, Niigata, Japan, (4)Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, (5)European Commission Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy, (6)Tsinghua University, Department of Earth System Science, Beijing, China, (7)NIES National Institute of Environmental Studies, Ibaraki, Japan
Abstract:
Urban emissions, especially from the transport sector, have been increasing rapidly in China and India. Modelers use global and regional emissions inventories to assess temporal and spatial distribution of these emissions to estimate their impacts on regional and global air quality and climate. However, large uncertainties exist in emissions inventories and quantification of this uncertainty is essential for better understanding of the linkage between emissions and air quality, climate, and health. We focus on this uncertainty by comparing emissions of carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), particulate matter (PM), black carbon (BC), and organic carbon (OC) from China in four different emissions inventories: Regional Emissions in Asia (REASv2.1); Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC); Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGARv4.2), and the inventory by Zhao. In addition to the total emissions, we also analyzed emissions from five sectors and at the provincial level, and found that large disagreements (~seven fold) among the four inventories exist in residential and transport sectors.
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