EDGAR v4.3.2 Global Atlas of the three major greenhouse gas emissions for the period 1970–2012

TLDR

EDGAR compiles anthropogenic emissions data for greenhouse gases and pollutants, providing quantitative support for atmospheric modelling, mitigation scenario analysis, and policy evaluation. The paper describes developments of EDGAR v4.3.2 for the three major long‑lived GHGs (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O) from a wide range of human activities excluding LULUCF and savannah burning, with a companion paper on air pollutants. The new inventory offers global estimates from 1970 to 2012 at IPCC source‑sector levels, using a bottom‑up, transparent, IPCC‑compliant methodology, and includes uncertainty factors for OECD, transition, and developing countries. The dataset provides global totals for 2010 (33.6 Pg CO₂ yr⁻¹, 0.34 Pg CH₄ yr⁻¹, 7.2 Tg N₂O yr⁻¹) with 95 % confidence intervals, documents country‑level trends, and shows fuel markets and financial instability have larger impacts on GHG trends than income or population. Data are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2658138 and visualised with 0.1° × 0.1° global emission grid maps.

Abstract

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.