Evaluation of Air Pollutant Emission Inventories in East Asia

Author(s):  
Younha Kim ◽  
Jung-hun Woo ◽  
Youjung Jang ◽  
Minwoo Park ◽  
Bomi Kim ◽  
...  

<p>Concentration of air pollutants such as tropospheric ozone and aerosols are mainly affected by meteorological variables and emissions. East Asia has large amount of anthropogenic and natural air pollutant emissions and has been putting lots of efforts to improve air quality. In order to seek effective ways to mitigate future air pollution, it is essential to understand the current emissions and their impacts on air quality. Emission inventory is one of the key datasets required to understand air quality and find ways to improve it. Amounts and spatial-temporal distributions of emissions are, however, not easy to estimate due to their complicate nature, therefore introduce significant uncertainties.</p><p>In this study, we had developed an updated version of our Asian emissions inventory, named NIER/KU-CREATE (Comprehensive Regional Emissions inventory for Atmospheric Transport Experiment) in support of climate-air quality study. We first inter-compare multiple bottom-up inventories to understand discrepancies among the dataset(sectoral, spatial). We then inter-compare those bottom-up emissions to the satellite-based top-down emission estimates to understand uncertainties of the databases. The bottom-up emission inventories used for this study are: CREATE, MEIC(Multiresolution Emission Inventory for China), REAS (Regional Emission inventory in ASia), and ECLIPSE(Evaluating the Climate and Air Quality Impacts of Short-Lived Pollutants). The satellite-derived top-down emission inventory had been acquired from the DECSO (Daily Emission derived Constrained by Satellite Observations) algorithm data from the GlobEmissions website.</p><p>The analysis showed that some discrepancies, in terms of emission amounts, sectoral shares and spatial distribution patterns, exist among the datasets. We analyzed further to find out which parameters could affect more on those discrepancies. Co-analysis of top-down and bottom-up emissions inventory help us to evaluate emissions amount and spatial distribution. These analysis are helpful for the development of more consistent and reliable inventories with the aim of reducing the uncertainties in air quality study. More results of evaluation of emissions will be presented on site.     </p><p>Acknowledgements : This work was supported by National Institute of Environment Research (NIER-2019-03-02-005), Korea Environment Industry & Technology Institute(KEITI) through Public Technology Program based on Environmental Policy Program, funded by Korea Ministry of Environment(MOE)(2019000160007). This research was supported by the National Strategic Project-Fine particle of the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT(MSIT), the Ministry of Environment(ME), and the Ministry of Health and Welfare(MOHW) (NRF-2017M3D8A1092022).</p>

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 7930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jung-Hun Woo ◽  
Younha Kim ◽  
Hyeon-Kook Kim ◽  
Ki-Chul Choi ◽  
Jeong-Hee Eum ◽  
...  

A bottom-up emissions inventory is one of the most important data sets needed to understand air quality (AQ) and climate change (CC). Several emission inventories have been developed for Asia, including Transport and Chemical Evolution over the Pacific (TRACE-P), Regional Emission Inventory in Asia (REAS), and Inter-Continental Chemical Transport Experiment (INTEX) and, while these have been used successfully for many international studies, they have limitations including restricted amounts of information on pollutant types and low levels of transparency with respect to the polluting sectors or fuel types involved. To address these shortcomings, we developed: (1) a base-year, bottom-up anthropogenic emissions inventory for Asia, using the most current parameters and international frameworks (i.e., the Greenhouse gas—Air pollution INteractions and Synergies (GAINS) model); and (2) a base-year, natural emissions inventory for biogenic and biomass burning. For (1), we focused mainly on China, South Korea, and Japan; however, we also covered emission inventories for other regions in Asia using data covering recent energy/industry statistics, emission factors, and control technology penetration. The emissions inventory (Comprehensive Regional Emissions inventory for Atmospheric Transport Experiment (CREATE)) covers 54 fuel classes, 201 subsectors, and 13 pollutants, namely SO2, NOx, CO, non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC), NH3, OC, BC, PM10, PM2.5, CO2, CH4, N2O, and Hg. For the base-year natural emissions inventory, the Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN) and BlueSky-Asia frameworks were used to estimate biogenic and biomass burning emissions, respectively. Since the CREATE emission inventory was designed/developed using international climate change/air quality (CC/AQ) assessment frameworks, such as GAINS, and has been fully connected with the most comprehensive emissions modeling systems—such as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Chemical Manufacturing Area Source (CMAS) system—it can be used to support various climate and AQ integrated modeling studies, both now and in the future.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Tianliang Zhao ◽  
Sunling Gong ◽  
Shaofei Kong ◽  
Lili Tang ◽  
...  

Abstract. Air pollutant emissions play a determinant role in deteriorating air quality. However, an uncertainty in emission inventories is still the key problem for modeling air pollution. In this study, an updated emission inventory of coal-fired power plants (UEIPP) based on online monitoring data in Jiangsu province of East China for the year of 2012 was implemented in the widely used Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC). By employing the Weather Research and Forecasting Model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), two simulations were executed to assess the atmospheric environmental change by using the original MEIC emission inventory and the MEIC inventory with the UEIPP. A synthetic analysis shows that (1) compared to the power emissions of MEIC, PM2.5, PM10, SO2 and NOx were lower, and CO, black carbon (BC), organic carbon (OC) and NMVOCs were higher in the UEIPP, reflecting a large discrepancy in the power emissions over East China; (2) In accordance with the changes of UEIPP, the modeled concentrations were reduced for SO2 and NO2, and increased for most areas of primary OC, BC and CO, whose concentrations in atmosphere are highly dependent on emission changes. (3) Interestingly, when the UEIPP was used, the atmospheric oxidizing capacity significantly reinforced, reflecting by increased oxidizing agents, e.g. O3 and OH, thus directly strengthened the chemical production from SO2 and NOx to sulfate and nitrate, which offset the reduction of primary PM2.5 emissions especially in the haze days. This study indicated the importance of updating air pollutant emission inventories in simulating the complex atmospheric environment changes with the implications on air quality and environmental changes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (16) ◽  
pp. 10125-10141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jieying Ding ◽  
Kazuyuki Miyazaki ◽  
Ronald Johannes van der A ◽  
Bas Mijling ◽  
Jun-ichi Kurokawa ◽  
...  

Abstract. We compare nine emission inventories of nitrogen oxides including four satellite-derived NOx inventories and the following bottom-up inventories for East Asia: REAS (Regional Emission inventory in ASia), MEIC (Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China), CAPSS (Clean Air Policy Support System) and EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research). Two of the satellite-derived inventories are estimated by using the DECSO (Daily Emission derived Constrained by Satellite Observations) algorithm, which is based on an extended Kalman filter applied to observations from OMI or from GOME-2. The other two are derived with the EnKF algorithm, which is based on an ensemble Kalman filter applied to observations of multiple species using either the chemical transport model CHASER and MIROC-chem. The temporal behaviour and spatial distribution of the inventories are compared on a national and regional scale. A distinction is also made between urban and rural areas. The intercomparison of all inventories shows good agreement in total NOx emissions over mainland China, especially for trends, with an average bias of about 20 % for yearly emissions. All the inventories show the typical emission reduction of 10 % during the Chinese New Year and a peak in December. Satellite-derived approaches using OMI show a summer peak due to strong emissions from soil and biomass burning in this season. Biases in NOx emissions and uncertainties in temporal variability increase quickly when the spatial scale decreases. The analyses of the differences show the importance of using observations from multiple instruments and a high spatial resolution model for the satellite-derived inventories, while for bottom-up inventories, accurate emission factors and activity information are required. The advantage of the satellite-derived approach is that the emissions are soon available after observation, while the strength of the bottom-up inventories is that they include detailed information of emissions for each source category.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 1191-1209
Author(s):  
Yang Yang ◽  
Yu Zhao ◽  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Xin Huang ◽  
...  

Abstract. We developed a top-down methodology combining the inversed chemistry transport modeling and satellite-derived tropospheric vertical column of NO2 and estimated the NOx emissions of the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region at a horizontal resolution of 9 km for January, April, July, and October 2016. The effect of the top-down emission estimation on air quality modeling and the response of ambient ozone (O3) and inorganic aerosols (SO42-, NO3-, and NH4+, SNA) to the changed precursor emissions were evaluated with the Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) system. The top-down estimates of NOx emissions were smaller than those (i.e., the bottom-up estimates) in a national emission inventory, Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC), for all the 4 months, and the monthly mean was calculated to be 260.0 Gg/month, 24 % less than the bottom-up one. The NO2 concentrations simulated with the bottom-up estimate of NOx emissions were clearly higher than the ground observations, indicating the possible overestimation in the current emission inventory, attributed to its insufficient consideration of recent emission control in the region. The model performance based on top-down estimate was much better, and the biggest change was found for July, with the normalized mean bias (NMB) and normalized mean error (NME) reduced from 111 % to −0.4 % and from 111 % to 33 %, respectively. The results demonstrate the improvement of NOx emission estimation with the nonlinear inversed modeling and satellite observation constraint. With the smaller NOx emissions in the top-down estimate than the bottom-up one, the elevated concentrations of ambient O3 were simulated for most of the YRD, and they were closer to observations except for July, implying the VOC (volatile organic compound)-limited regime of O3 formation. With available ground observations of SNA in the YRD, moreover, better model performance of NO3- and NH4+ was achieved for most seasons, implying the effectiveness of precursor emission estimation on the simulation of secondary inorganic aerosols. Through the sensitivity analysis of O3 formation for April 2016, the decreased O3 concentrations were found for most of the YRD region when only VOC emissions were reduced or the reduced rate of VOC emissions was 2 times of that of NOx, implying the crucial role of VOC control in O3 pollution abatement. The SNA level for January 2016 was simulated to decline 12 % when 30 % of NH3 emissions were reduced, while the change was much smaller with the same reduced rate for SO2 or NOx. The result suggests that reducing NH3 emissions was the most effective way to alleviate SNA pollution of the YRD in winter.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 2065-2079 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Tianliang Zhao ◽  
Sunling Gong ◽  
Shaofei Kong ◽  
Lili Tang ◽  
...  

Abstract. Air pollutant emissions play a determinant role in deteriorating air quality. However, an uncertainty in emission inventories is still the key problem for modeling air pollution. In this study, an updated emission inventory of coal-fired power plants (UEIPP) based on online monitoring data in Jiangsu Province of East China for the year of 2012 was implemented in the widely used Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC). By employing the Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), two simulation experiments were executed to assess the atmospheric environment change by using the original MEIC emission inventory and the MEIC inventory with the UEIPP. A synthetic analysis shows that power plant emissions of PM2.5, PM10, SO2, and NOx were lower, and CO, black carbon (BC), organic carbon (OC) and NMVOCs (non-methane volatile organic compounds) were higher in UEIPP relative to those in MEIC, reflecting a large discrepancy in the power plant emissions over East China. In accordance with the changes in UEIPP, the modeled concentrations were reduced for SO2 and NO2, and increased for most areas of primary OC, BC, and CO. Interestingly, when the UEIPP was used, the atmospheric oxidizing capacity significantly reinforced. This was reflected by increased oxidizing agents, e.g., O3 and OH, thus directly strengthening the chemical production from SO2 and NOx to sulfate and nitrate, respectively, which offset the reduction of primary PM2.5 emissions especially on haze days. This study indicates the importance of updating air pollutant emission inventories in simulating the complex atmospheric environment changes with implications on air quality and environmental changes.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Crippa ◽  
Greet Janssens-Maenhout ◽  
Diego Guizzardi ◽  
Rita Van Dingenen ◽  
Frank Dentener

Abstract. In this work we couple the HTAPv2.2 global air pollutant emission inventory with the global source receptor model TM5-FASST to evaluate the relative contribution of the major anthropogenic emission sources (power generation, industry, ground transport, residential, agriculture and international shipping) to air quality and human health in 2010. We focus on particulate matter (PM) concentrations because of the relative importance of PM2.5 emissions in populated areas and the proven cumulative negative effects on human health. We estimate that in 2010 regional annual averaged anthropogenic PM2.5 concentrations varied between ca. 1 and 40 μg/m3 depending on the region, with the highest concentrations observed in China and India, and lower concentrations in Europe and North America. The relative contribution of anthropogenic emission source sectors to PM2.5 concentrations varies between the regions. European PM pollution is mainly influenced by the agricultural and residential sectors, while the major contributing sectors to PM pollution in Asia and the emerging economies are the power generation, industrial and residential sectors. We also evaluate the emission sectors and emission regions in which pollution reduction measures would lead to the largest improvement on the overall air quality. We show that in order to improve air quality, regional policies should be implemented (e.g. in Europe) due to the transboundary features of PM pollution. In addition, we investigate emission inventory uncertainties and their propagation to PM2.5 concentrations, in order to identify the most effective strategies to be implemented at sector and regional level to improve emission inventories knowledge and air quality. We show that the uncertainty of PM concentrations depends not only on the uncertainty of local emission inventories but also on that of the surrounding regions. Finally, we propagate emission inventories uncertainty to PM concentrations and health impacts.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jieying Ding ◽  
Kazuyuki Miyazaki ◽  
Ronald Johannes van der A ◽  
Bas Mijling ◽  
Jun-ichi Kurokawa ◽  
...  

Abstract. We compare 9 emission inventories of nitrogen oxides including four satellite-derived NOx inventories and the following bottom-up inventories for East Asia: REAS (Regional Emission inventory in ASia), MEIC (Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China), CAPSS (Clean Air Policy Support System) and EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research). Two of the satellite-derived inventories are estimated by using the DECSO (Daily Emission derived Constrained by Satellite Observations) algorithm, which is based on an extended Kalman filter applied to observations from OMI or from GOME-2. The other two are derived with the EnKF algorithm, which is based on an ensemble Kalman Filter applied to observations of multiple species using either the chemical transport model CHASER and MIROC-chem. The temporal behaviour and spatial distribution of the inventories are compared on a national and regional scale. A distinction is also made between urban and rural areas. The intercomparison of all inventories shows good agreement in total NOx emissions over Mainland China, especially for trends, with an average bias of about 20 % for yearly emissions. All the inventories show the typical emission reduction of 10 % during the Chinese New Year and a peak in December. Satellite-derived approaches using OMI show a summer peak due to strong emissions from soil and biomass burning in this season. Biases in NOx emissions and uncertainties in temporal variability increase quickly when the spatial scale decreases. The analyses of the differences show: the importance of using observations from multiple instruments and a high spatial resolution model for the satellite-derived inventories, while for bottom-up inventories, accurate emission factors and activity information are required. The advantage of the satellite derived approach is that the emissions are soon available after observation, while the strength of the bottom-up inventories is that they include detailed information of emissions for each source category.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 255-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. V. Berezin ◽  
I. B. Konovalov ◽  
P. Ciais ◽  
A. Richter ◽  
S. Tao ◽  
...  

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (11) ◽  
pp. 6651-6670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Wang ◽  
Jun Wang ◽  
Meng Zhou ◽  
Daven K. Henze ◽  
Cui Ge ◽  
...  

Abstract. Top-down emission estimates provide valuable up-to-date information on pollution sources; however, the computational effort and spatial resolution of satellite products involved with developing these emissions often require them to be estimated at resolutions that are much coarser than is necessary for regional air quality forecasting. This work thus introduces several approaches to downscaling coarse-resolution (2∘×2.5∘) posterior SO2 and NOx emissions for improving air quality assessment and forecasts over China in October 2013. As in Part 1 of this study, these 2∘×2.5∘ posterior SO2 and NOx emission inventories are obtained from GEOS-Chem adjoint modeling with the constraints of OMPS SO2 and NO2 products retrieved at 50 km×50 km at nadir and ∼190km×50km at the edge of ground track. The prior emission inventory (MIX) and the posterior GEOS-Chem simulations of surface SO2 and NO2 concentrations at coarse resolution underestimate observed hot spots, which is called the coarse-grid smearing (CGS) effect. To mitigate the CGS effect, four methods are developed: (a) downscale 2∘×2.5∘ GEOS-Chem surface SO2 and NO2 concentrations to the resolution of 0.25∘×0.3125∘ through a dynamic downscaling concentration (MIX-DDC) approach, which assumes that the 0.25∘×0.3125∘ simulation using the prior MIX emissions has the correct spatial distribution of SO2 and NO2 concentrations but a systematic bias; (b) downscale surface NO2 simulations at 2∘×2.5∘ to 0.05∘×0.05∘ according to the spatial distribution of Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) nighttime light (NL) observations (e.g., NL-DC approach) based on correlation between VIIRS NL intensity with TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) NO2 observations; (c) downscale posterior emissions (DE) of SO2 and NOx to 0.25∘×0.3125∘ with the assumption that the prior fine-resolution MIX inventory has the correct spatial distribution (e.g., MIX-DE approach); and (d) downscale posterior NOx emissions using VIIRS NL observations (e.g., NL-DE approach). Numerical experiments reveal that (a) using the MIX-DDC approach, posterior SO2 and NO2 simulations improve on the corresponding MIX prior simulations with normalized centered root mean square error (NCRMSE) decreases of 63.7 % and 30.2 %, respectively; (b) the posterior NO2 simulation has an NCRMSE that is 17.9 % smaller than the prior when they are both downscaled through NL-DC, and NL-DC is able to better mitigate the CGS effect than MIX-DDC; (c) the simulation at 0.25∘×0.3125∘ using the MIX-DE approach has NCRMSEs that are 58.8 % and 14.7 % smaller than the prior 0.25∘×0.3125∘ MIX simulation for surface SO2 and NO2 concentrations, respectively, but the RMSE from the MIX-DE posterior simulation is slightly larger than that from the MIX-DDC posterior simulation for both SO2 and NO2; (d) the NL-DE posterior NO2 simulation also improves on the prior MIX simulation at 0.25∘×0.3125∘, but it is worse than the MIX-DE posterior simulation; (e) in terms of evaluating the downscaled SO2 and NO2 simulations simultaneously, using the posterior SO2 and NOx emissions from joint inverse modeling of both species is better than only using one (SO2 or NOx) emission from corresponding single-species inverse modeling and is similar to using the posterior emissions of SO2 and NOx emission inventories respectively from single-species inverse modeling. Forecasts of surface concentrations for November 2013 using the posterior emissions obtained by applying the posterior MIX-DE emissions for October 2013 with the monthly variation information derived from the prior MIX emission inventory show that (a) the improvements of forecasting surface SO2 concentrations through MIX-DE and MIX-DDC are comparable; (b) for the NO2 forecast, MIX-DE shows larger improvement than NL-DE and MIX-DDC; (c) NL-DC is able to better decrease the CGS effect than MIX-DE but shows larger NCRMSE; (d) the forecast of surface O3 concentrations is improved by MIX-DE downscaled posterior NOx emissions. Overall, for practical forecasting of air quality, it is recommended to use satellite-based observation already available from the last month to jointly constrain SO2 and NO2 emissions at coarser resolution and then downscale these posterior emissions at finer spatial resolution suitable for regional air quality modeling for the present month.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 449
Author(s):  
Lili Li ◽  
Kun Wang ◽  
Zhijian Sun ◽  
Weiye Wang ◽  
Qingliang Zhao ◽  
...  

Road dust is one of the primary sources of particulate matter which has implications for air quality, climate and health. With the aim of characterizing the emissions, in this study, a bottom-up approach of county level emission inventory from paved road dust based on field investigation was developed. An inventory of high-resolution paved road dust (PRD) emissions by monthly and spatial allocation at 1 km × 1 km resolution in Harbin in 2016 was compiled using accessible county level, seasonal data and local parameters based on field investigation to increase temporal-spatial resolution. The results demonstrated the total PRD emissions of TSP, PM10, and PM2.5 in Harbin were 270,207 t, 54,597 t, 14,059 t, respectively. The temporal variation trends of pollutant emissions from PRD was consistent with the characteristics of precipitation, with lower emissions in winter and summer, and higher emissions in spring and autumn. The spatial allocation of emissions has a strong association with Harbin’s road network, mainly concentrating in the central urban area compared to the surrounding counties. Through scenario analysis, positive control measures were essential and effective for PRD pollution. The inventory developed in this study reflected the level of fugitive dust on paved road in Harbin, and it could reduce particulate matter pollution with the development of mitigation strategies and could comply with air quality modelling requirements, especially in the frigid region of northeastern China.


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