Emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases over Asian regions during 2000–2008: Regional Emission inventory in ASia (REAS) version 2

Abstract

Abstract. We have updated the Regional Emission inventory in ASia (REAS) as version 2.1. REAS 2.1 includes most major air pollutants and greenhouse gases from each year during 2000 and 2008 and following areas of Asia: East, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and the Asian part of Russia. Emissions are estimated for each country and region using updated activity data and parameters. Monthly gridded data with a 0.25° × 0.25° resolution are also provided. Asian emissions for each species in 2008 are as follows (with their growth rate from 2000 to 2008): 56.9 Tg (+34%) for SO2, 53.9 Tg (+54%) for NOx, 359.5 Tg (+34%) for CO, 68.5 Tg (+46%) for non-methane volatile organic compounds, 32.8 Tg (+17%) for NH3, 36.4 Tg (+45%) for PM10, 24.7 Tg (+42%) for PM2.5, 3.03 Tg (+35%) for black carbon, 7.72 Tg (+21%) for organic carbon, 182.2 Tg (+32%) for CH4, 5.80 Tg (+18%) for N2O, and 16.0 Pg (+57%) for CO2. By country, China and India were respectively the largest and second largest contributors to Asian emissions. Both countries also had higher growth rates in emissions than others because of their continuous increases in energy consumption, industrial activities, and infrastructure development. In China, emission mitigation measures have been implemented gradually. Emissions of SO2 in China increased from 2000 to 2006 and then began to decrease as flue-gas desulphurization was installed to large power plants. On the other hand, emissions of air pollutants in total East Asia except for China decreased from 2000 to 2008 owing to lower economic growth rates and more effective emission regulations in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Emissions from other regions generally increased from 2000 to 2008, although their relative shares of total Asian emissions are smaller than those of China and India. Tables of annual emissions by country and region broken down by sub-sector and fuel type, and monthly gridded emission data with a resolution of 0.25° × 0.25° for the major sectors are available from the following URL: http://www.nies.go.jp/REAS/.

A 15-year record (2001–2015) of the ratio of nitrate to non-sea-salt sulfate in precipitation over East Asia

“…1). It has been recognized that anthropogenic emissions centered over this region (Kurokawa et al, 2013;Li et al, 2017), the related atmospheric concentration, and depositions are severe in China. To overcome this limitation and advance our knowledge of precipitation chemistry over the whole of China, we evaluated additional sources of data for the chemical concentration of precipitation over China.…”

“…In our previous studies (Itahashi et al, 2014a(Itahashi et al, , 2015, which considered data obtained in 2000-2011, emissions from China exhibited a transition from a continuously increasing trend. NO x emissions in China have been rising steadily (Kurokawa et al, 2013;Itahashi et al, 2014b), whereas SO 2 emissions in China peaked in [2005][2006] and subsequently declined due to the introduction of flue-gas desulfurization systems in China's 11th Five-Year Plan (2006 (Kurokawa et al, 2013;Itahashi et al, 2012). Recently, it has been reported that NO x emissions in China declined after 2011-2012 (Irie et al, 2016;Xia et al, 2016;Krotkov et al, 2016;van der A et al, 2017).…”

Targeted emission reductions from global super-polluting power plant units

“…However, there is large variation in the environmental and health impacts of power generation across regions. In particular, environmental regulation in developed regions has greatly reduced emissions of criteria pollutants (for example, SO 2 , NO x , and PM 2.5 ) by power-generating units [19][20][21][22] , largely decoupling economic activity from air quality. Meanwhile rapid rises in fossil fuel power generation and lax emission regulations and regulation enforcement 23 in some developing countries have led to increasing emissions, local violations of WHO outdoor air quality standards 15 and offsetting air quality improvements in downwind regions 24 .…”

Simultaneous Dust and Pollutant Transport over East Asia: The Tripartite Environment Ministers Meeting March 2014 Case Study

“…The lowest model layer thickness was about 130 m. We used anthropogenic emissions from the Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) for the global domain and the Regional Emission inventory in ASia (REAS) ver. 2.1 for the Asia domain, as estimated by Kurokawa et al (2013). The global simulation started from the January 2013 to March 2014, and Asian simulation using global concentrations started from January 2014.…”