Abstract. The mandate of the Task Force Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (TF HTAP) under the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) is to improve the scientific understanding of the intercontinental air pollution transport, to quantify impacts on human health, vegetation and climate, to identify emission mitigation options across the regions of the Northern Hemisphere, and to guide future policies on these aspects. The harmonization and improvement of regional emission inventories is imperative to obtain consolidated estimates on the formation of global-scale air pollution. An emissions data set has been constructed using regional emission grid maps (annual and monthly) for SO2, NOx, CO, NMVOC, NH3, PM10, PM2.5, BC and OC for the years 2008 and 2010, with the purpose of providing consistent information to global and regional scale modelling efforts. This compilation of different regional gridded inventories – including that of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for USA, the EPA and Environment Canada (for Canada), the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) and Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) for Europe, and the Model Inter-comparison Study for Asia (MICS-Asia III) for China, India and other Asian countries – was gap-filled with the emission grid maps of the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGARv4.3) for the rest of the world (mainly South America, Africa, Russia and Oceania). Emissions from seven main categories of human activities (power, industry, residential, agriculture, ground transport, aviation and shipping) were estimated and spatially distributed on a common grid of 0.1° × 0.1° longitude-latitude, to yield monthly, global, sector-specific grid maps for each substance and year. The HTAP_v2.2 air pollutant grid maps are considered to combine latest available regional information within a complete global data set. The disaggregation by sectors, high spatial and temporal resolution and detailed information on the data sources and references used will provide the user the required transparency. Because HTAP_v2.2 contains primarily official and/or widely used regional emission grid maps, it can be recommended as a global baseline emission inventory, which is regionally accepted as a reference and from which different scenarios assessing emission reduction policies at a global scale could start. An analysis of country-specific implied emission factors shows a large difference between industrialised countries and developing countries for acidifying gaseous air pollutant emissions (SO2 and NOx) from the energy and industry sectors. This is not observed for the particulate matter emissions (PM10, PM2.5), which show large differences between countries in the residential sector instead. The per capita emissions of all world countries, classified from low to high income, reveal an increase in level and in variation for gaseous acidifying pollutants, but not for aerosols. For aerosols, an opposite trend is apparent with higher per capita emissions of particulate matter for low income countries.

Abstract. 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.

Abstract. The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) compiles anthropogenic emissions data for greenhouse gases (GHGs), and for multiple air pollutants, based on international statistics and emission factors. EDGAR data provide quantitative support for atmospheric modelling and for mitigation scenario and impact assessment analyses as well as for policy evaluation. The new version (v4.3.2) of the EDGAR emission inventory provides global estimates, broken down to IPCC-relevant source-sector levels, from 1970 (the year of the European Union's first Air Quality Directive) to 2012 (the end year of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, KP). Strengths of EDGAR v4.3.2 include global geo-coverage (226 countries), continuity in time, and comprehensiveness in activities. Emissions of multiple chemical compounds, GHGs as well as air pollutants, from relevant sources (fossil fuel activities but also, for example, fermentation processes in agricultural activities) are compiled following a bottom-up (BU), transparent and IPCC-compliant methodology. This paper describes EDGAR v4.3.2 developments with respect to three major long-lived GHGs (CO2, CH4, and N2O) derived from a wide range of human activities apart from the land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector and apart from savannah burning; a companion paper quantifies and discusses emissions of air pollutants. Detailed information is included for each of the IPCC-relevant source sectors, leading to global totals for 2010 (in the middle of the first KP commitment period) (with a 95 % confidence interval in parentheses): 33.6(±5.9) Pg CO2 yr−1, 0.34(±0.16) Pg CH4 yr−1, and 7.2(±3.7) Tg N2O yr−1. We provide uncertainty factors in emissions data for the different GHGs and for three different groups of countries: OECD countries of 1990, countries with economies in transition in 1990, and the remaining countries in development (the UNFCCC non-Annex I parties). We document trends for the major emitting countries together with the European Union in more detail, demonstrating that effects of fuel markets and financial instability have had greater impacts on GHG trends than effects of income or population. These data (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2658138, Janssens-Maenhout et al., 2019) are visualised with annual and monthly global emissions grid maps of 0.1∘×0.1∘ for each source sector.

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.

Abstract. The EDGARv4.3.1 (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) global anthropogenic emissions inventory of gaseous (SO2, NOx, CO, non-methane volatile organic compounds and NH3) and particulate (PM10, PM2.5, black and organic carbon) air pollutants for the period 1970–2010 is used to develop retrospective air pollution emissions scenarios to quantify the roles and contributions of changes in energy consumption and efficiency, technology progress and end-of-pipe emission reduction measures and their resulting impact on health and crop yields at European and global scale. The reference EDGARv4.3.1 emissions include observed and reported changes in activity data, fuel consumption and air pollution abatement technologies over the past 4 decades, combined with Tier 1 and region-specific Tier 2 emission factors. Two further retrospective scenarios assess the interplay of policy and industry. The highest emission STAG_TECH scenario assesses the impact of the technology and end-of-pipe reduction measures in the European Union, by considering historical fuel consumption, along with a stagnation of technology with constant emission factors since 1970, and assuming no further abatement measures and improvement imposed by European emission standards. The lowest emission STAG_ENERGY scenario evaluates the impact of increased fuel consumption by considering unchanged energy consumption since the year 1970, but assuming the technological development, end-of-pipe reductions, fuel mix and energy efficiency of 2010. Our scenario analysis focuses on the three most important and most regulated sectors (power generation, manufacturing industry and road transport), which are subject to multi-pollutant European Union Air Quality regulations. Stagnation of technology and air pollution reduction measures at 1970 levels would have led to 129 % (or factor 2.3) higher SO2, 71 % higher NOx and 69 % higher PM2.5 emissions in Europe (EU27), demonstrating the large role that technology has played in reducing emissions in 2010. However, stagnation of energy consumption at 1970 levels, but with 2010 fuel mix and energy efficiency, and assuming current (year 2010) technology and emission control standards, would have lowered today's NOx emissions by ca. 38 %, SO2 by 50 % and PM2.5 by 12 % in Europe. A reduced-form chemical transport model is applied to calculate regional and global levels of aerosol and ozone concentrations and to assess the associated impact of air quality improvements on human health and crop yield loss, showing substantial impacts of EU technologies and standards inside as well as outside Europe. We assess that the interplay of policy and technological advance in Europe had substantial benefits in Europe, but also led to an important improvement of particulate matter air quality in other parts of the world.