Closing the gap? Top-down versus bottom-up projections of China’s regional energy use and CO2 emissions

2016 ◽  
Vol 162 ◽  
pp. 1355-1373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hancheng Dai ◽  
Peggy Mischke ◽  
Xuxuan Xie ◽  
Yang Xie ◽  
Toshihiko Masui
Keyword(s):  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Regional Energy ◽  
Closing The Gap

scholarly journals Achieving International Species Conservation Targets: Closing the Gap between Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Louise Maira ◽  
Onnie Byersb ◽  
CarolineM Leesc ◽  
Dao Nguyend ◽  
JonPaul Rodrigueze ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Species Conservation ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Conservation Targets ◽  
Closing The Gap

scholarly journals Toward an Operational Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions Monitoring and Verification Support Capacity

2020 ◽  
Vol 101 (8) ◽  
pp. E1439-E1451 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Janssens-Maenhout ◽  
B. Pinty ◽  
M. Dowell ◽  
H. Zunker ◽  
E. Andersson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Green Light ◽  
Atmospheric Measurements ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Anthropogenic Co2 ◽  
Operational Capacity

Abstract Under the Paris Agreement (PA), progress of emission reduction efforts is tracked on the basis of regular updates to national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories, referred to as bottom-up estimates. However, only top-down atmospheric measurements can provide observation-based evidence of emission trends. Today, there is no internationally agreed, operational capacity to monitor anthropogenic GHG emission trends using atmospheric measurements to complement national bottom-up inventories. The European Commission (EC), the European Space Agency, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, and international experts are joining forces to develop such an operational capacity for monitoring anthropogenic CO2 emissions as a new CO2 service under the EC’s Copernicus program. Design studies have been used to translate identified needs into defined requirements and functionalities of this anthropogenic CO2 emissions Monitoring and Verification Support (CO2MVS) capacity. It adopts a holistic view and includes components such as atmospheric spaceborne and in situ measurements, bottom-up CO2 emission maps, improved modeling of the carbon cycle, an operational data-assimilation system integrating top-down and bottom-up information, and a policy-relevant decision support tool. The CO2MVS capacity with operational capabilities by 2026 is expected to visualize regular updates of global CO2 emissions, likely at 0.05° x 0.05°. This will complement the PA’s enhanced transparency framework, providing actionable information on anthropogenic CO2 emissions that are the main driver of climate change. This information will be available to all stakeholders, including governments and citizens, allowing them to reflect on trends and effectiveness of reduction measures. The new EC gave the green light to pass the CO2MVS from exploratory to implementing phase.

scholarly journals Estimation of fossil-fuel CO<sub>2</sub> emissions using satellite measurements of "proxy" species

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (21) ◽  
pp. 13509-13540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor B. Konovalov ◽  
Evgeny V. Berezin ◽  
Philippe Ciais ◽  
Grégoire Broquet ◽  
Ruslan V. Zhuravlev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Co2 Emission ◽  
Emission Inventory ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Inventory Data ◽  
Satellite Measurements ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Study Region ◽  
Emission Estimate

Abstract. Fossil-fuel (FF) burning releases carbon dioxide (CO2) together with many other chemical species, some of which, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and carbon monoxide (CO), are routinely monitored from space. This study examines the feasibility of estimation of FF CO2 emissions from large industrial regions by using NO2 and CO column retrievals from satellite measurements in combination with simulations by a mesoscale chemistry transport model (CTM). To this end, an inverse modeling method is developed that allows estimating FF CO2 emissions from different sectors of the economy, as well as the total CO2 emissions, in a given region. The key steps of the method are (1) inferring "top-down" estimates of the regional budget of anthropogenic NOx and CO emissions from satellite measurements of proxy species (NO2 and CO in the case considered) without using formal a priori constraints on these budgets, (2) the application of emission factors (the NOx-to-CO2 and CO-to-CO2 emission ratios in each sector) that relate FF CO2 emissions to the proxy species emissions and are evaluated by using data of "bottom-up" emission inventories, and (3) cross-validation and optimal combination of the estimates of CO2 emission budgets derived from measurements of the different proxy species. Uncertainties in the top-down estimates of the NOx and CO emissions are evaluated and systematic differences between the measured and simulated data are taken into account by using original robust techniques validated with synthetic data. To examine the potential of the method, it was applied to the budget of emissions for a western European region including 12 countries by using NO2 and CO column amounts retrieved from, respectively, the OMI and IASI satellite measurements and simulated by the CHIMERE mesoscale CTM, along with the emission conversion factors based on the EDGAR v4.2 emission inventory. The analysis was focused on evaluation of the uncertainty levels for the top-down NOx and CO emission estimates and "hybrid" estimates (that is, those based on both atmospheric measurements of a given proxy species and respective bottom-up emission inventory data) of FF CO2 emissions, as well as on examining consistency between the FF NO2 emission estimates derived from measurements of the different proxy species. It is found that NO2 measurements can provide much stronger constraints to the total annual FF CO2 emissions in the study region than CO measurements, the accuracy of the NO2-measurement-based CO2 emission estimate being mostly limited by the uncertainty in the top-down NOx emission estimate. Nonetheless, CO measurements are also found to be useful as they provide additional constraints to CO2 emissions and enable evaluation of the hybrid FF CO2 emission estimates obtained from NO2 measurements. Our most reliable estimate for the total annual FF CO2 emissions in the study region in 2008 (2.71 ± 0.30 Pg CO2) is found to be about 11 and 5 % lower than the respective estimates based on the EDGAR v.4.2 (3.03 Pg CO2) and CDIAC (2.86 Pg CO2) emission inventories, with the difference between our estimate and the CDIAC inventory data not being statistically significant. In general, the results of this study indicate that the proposed method has the potential to become a useful tool for identification of possible biases and/or inconsistencies in the bottom-up emission inventory data regarding CO2, NOx, and CO emissions from fossil-fuel burning in different regions of the world.

scholarly journals The Relationship between Human Well-Being and Carbon Emissions

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 547
Author(s):  
Qin Li ◽  
Hongmin Chen
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Future Research Directions ◽  
The Relationship

Governments around the world are actively exploring strategies to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. In addition to technological progress, promoting a transformation of residents’ behaviors to a low carbon mode is also a solution. Many people are concerned about how to reduce carbon emissions while ensuring human well-being. Starting from the comparative analysis of two main theories of human well-being, this paper sorted out existing well-being measurement methods from the perspectives of “top-down” and “bottom-up” and further sorted out research on the relationship between human well-being and energy carbon emissions. While “top-down” research is conducive to the layout of macro policies, “bottom-up” research can better help to promote the transformation of society to a low carbon life by estimating the energy consumption and carbon emissions contained in human needs. Current research discusses human well-being, human needs, energy use and carbon emissions, respectively, but they are not systematically integrated. Furthermore, this paper proposes a framework combining these aspects to analyze the relationship between human well-being and carbon emissions. In addition, this paper suggests future research directions.

scholarly journals Estimation of fossil-fuel CO<sub>2</sub> emissions using satellite measurements of "proxy" species

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Igor B. Konovalov ◽  
Evgeny V. Berezin ◽  
Philippe Ciais ◽  
Grégoire Broquet ◽  
Ruslan B. Zhuravlev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Co2 Emission ◽  
Emission Inventory ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Inventory Data ◽  
Satellite Measurements ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Study Region ◽  
Emission Estimate

Abstract. Fossil fuel (FF) burning releases carbon dioxide (CO2) together with many other chemical species, some of which, such as, e.g., nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and carbon monoxide (CO), are routinely monitored from space. This study examines the feasibility of estimation of FF CO2 emissions from large industrial regions by using NO2 and CO column retrievals from satellite measurements in combination with simulations by a mesoscale chemistry transport model (CTM). To this end, an inverse modeling method is developed that allows estimating FF CO2 emissions from different sectors of the economy, as well as the total CO2 emissions, in a given region. The key steps of the method are (1) inferring "top-down" estimates of the regional budget of anthropogenic emissions of proxy species (that is, NOx and CO in the case considered) from satellite measurements without using formal a priori constraints on these budgets, (2) application of emission factors (the NOx-to-CO2 and CO-to-CO2 emission ratios in each sector) that relate FF CO2 emissions to the emissions of the proxy species and are evaluated by using data of "bottom-up" emission inventories, (3) cross-validation and optimal combination of the estimates of CO2 emission budgets derived from measurements of the different proxy species. Uncertainties in the top-down estimates of the emissions of the proxy species are evaluated and systematic differences between the measured and simulated data are taken into account by using original robust techniques validated with synthetic data. To examine the potential of the method, it was applied to the budget of emissions for a western European region including 12 countries by using NO2 and CO column amounts retrieved from, respectively, the OMI and IASI satellite measurements and simulated by the CHIMERE mesoscale CTM, along with the emission conversion factors based on the EDGAR v4.2 emission inventory. The analysis was focused on evaluation of the uncertainty levels for the "top-down" NOx and CO emission estimates and "hybrid" estimates (that is, those based on both atmospheric measurements of a given proxy species and respective "bottom-up" emission inventory data) of FF CO2 emissions, as well as on examining consistency between the FF СO2 emission estimates derived from measurements of the different proxy species. It is found that NO2 measurements can provide much stronger constraints to the total annual FF CO2 emissions in the study region than CO measurements, the accuracy of the NO2-measurement-based CO2 emission estimate being mostly limited by the uncertainty in the top-down NOx emission estimate. Nonetheless, CO measurements are also found to be useful as they provide additional constraints to CO2 emissions and enable evaluation of the hybrid FF CO2 emission estimates obtained from NO2 measurements. Our most reliable estimate for the total annual FF CO2 emissions in the study region in 2008 (2.71±0.30 Pg CO2) is found to be about 11 % and 5 % lower than the respective estimates based on the EDGAR v.4.2 (3.03 Pg CO2) and CDIAC (2.86 Pg CO2) emission inventories, with the difference between our estimate and the CDIAC inventory data being not statistically significant. In general, the results of this study indicate that the proposed method has a potential to become a useful tool for identification of possible biases and/or inconsistencies in the bottom-up emission inventory data regarding CO2, NOx and CO emissions from fossil fuel burning in different regions of the world.

Transport Energy Embodied in Consumer Goods: A Hybrid Life-Cycle Analysis

2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesper Munksgaard ◽  
Manfred Lenzen ◽  
Thomas C. Jensen ◽  
Lise-Lotte Pade
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Life Cycle Analysis ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Process Analysis ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Output Analysis ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Input Output Analysis ◽  
Transportation Modes ◽  
International Transport

This paper describes an analysis of the transport-related energy embodied in goods consumed by households. Our approach combines bottom-up with top-down modelling in a hybrid life-cycle analysis. The bottom-up part is a process analysis of international transport, examining foreign trade statistics, transportation modes, transport distances, and energy efficiencies. The top-down part is an input-output analysis identifying transport energy use in upstream production layers. To demonstrate the application of the model we carry out a three-step empirical analysis of goods consumed in Denmark in 1995, starting with highly aggregated commodity groups, and ending with “bread”.

scholarly journals Multiannual changes of CO<sub>2</sub> emissions in China: indirect estimates derived from satellite measurements of tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> columns

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 255-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. V. Berezin ◽  
I. B. Konovalov ◽  
P. Ciais ◽  
A. Richter ◽  
S. Tao ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Co2 Emission ◽  
Emission Inventory ◽  
Emission Inventories ◽  
Satellite Measurements ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Tropospheric No2 ◽  
Emission Changes

Abstract. Multi-annual satellite measurements of tropospheric NO2 columns are used for evaluation of CO2 emission changes in China in the period from 1996 to 2008. Indirect annual top-down estimates of CO2 emissions are derived from the satellite NO2 columns measurements by means of a simple inverse modeling procedure involving simulations performed with the CHIMERE mesoscale chemistry transport model and the CO2 to NOx emission ratios from the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research version 4.2 (EDGAR v4.2) global anthropogenic emission inventory. Exponential trends in the normalized time series of annual emission are evaluated separately for the periods from 1996 to 2001 and from 2001 to 2008. The results indicate that the both periods manifest strong positive trends in the CO2 emissions, and that the trend in the second period was significantly larger than the trend in the first period. Specifically, the trends in the first and second periods are estimated to be in the range from 3.7 to 8.0 and from 9.5 to 13.0 percent per year, respectively, taking into account both statistical and probable systematic uncertainties. Comparison of our top-down estimates of the CO2 emission changes with the corresponding bottom-up estimates provided by EDGAR v4.2 and Global Carbon Project (GCP) emission inventories reveals that while acceleration of the CO2 emission growth in the considered period is a common feature of the both kinds of estimates, nonlinearity in the CO2 emission changes may be strongly exaggerated in the emission inventories. Specifically, the atmospheric NO2 observations do not confirm the existence of a sharp bend in the emission inventory data time series in the period from 2000 to 2002. A significant quantitative difference is revealed between the bottom-up and top-down estimates of the CO2 emission trend in the period from 1996 to 2001 (specifically, the trend was not positive according to the emission inventories, but is strongly positive in our estimates). These results confirm the findings of earlier studies which indicated probable large uncertainties in the energy production and other activity data from international energy statistics used as the input information in the emission inventories for China. For the period from 2001 to 2008, the different kinds of estimates agree within the uncertainty range. In general, satellite measurements of tropospheric NO2 are shown to be a useful source of information on CO2 sources colocated with sources of nitrogen oxides; the corresponding potential of these measurements should be exploited further in future studies.

scholarly journals Gridded fossil CO2 emissions and related O2 combustion consistent with national inventories 1959–2018

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew W. Jones ◽  
Robbie M. Andrew ◽  
Glen P. Peters ◽  
Greet Janssens-Maenhout ◽  
Anthony J. De-Gol ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Spatial Resolution ◽  
Carbon Budget ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Cement Production ◽  
Global Carbon Budget ◽  
Carbon Project ◽  
Global Carbon

AbstractQuantification of CO2 fluxes at the Earth’s surface is required to evaluate the causes and drivers of observed increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Atmospheric inversion models disaggregate observed variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration to variability in CO2 emissions and sinks. They require prior constraints fossil CO2 emissions. Here we describe GCP-GridFED (version 2019.1), a gridded fossil emissions dataset that is consistent with the national CO2 emissions reported by the Global Carbon Project (GCP). GCP-GridFEDv2019.1 provides monthly fossil CO2 emissions estimates for the period 1959–2018 at a spatial resolution of 0.1°. Estimates are provided separately for oil, coal and natural gas, for mixed international bunker fuels, and for the calcination of limestone during cement production. GCP-GridFED also includes gridded estimates of O2 uptake based on oxidative ratios for oil, coal and natural gas. It will be updated annually and made available for atmospheric inversions contributing to GCP global carbon budget assessments, thus aligning the prior constraints on top-down fossil CO2 emissions with the bottom-up estimates compiled by the GCP.

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