A global gridded (0.1° × 0.1°) inventory of methane emissions from oil, gas, and coal exploitation based on national reports to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
<p>Individual countries report national emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in accordance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We present a global inventory of methane emissions from oil, gas, and coal exploitation that spatially allocates the nat...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2020-03-01
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| Series: | Earth System Science Data |
| Online Access: | https://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/12/563/2020/essd-12-563-2020.pdf |
| Summary: | <p>Individual countries report national emissions of
methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in accordance with the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We present a global
inventory of methane emissions from oil, gas, and coal exploitation that
spatially allocates the national emissions reported to the UNFCCC
(Scarpelli et al., 2019). Our inventory is at <span class="inline-formula"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M2" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow><mn mathvariant="normal">0.1</mn><msup><mi/><mo>∘</mo></msup><mo>×</mo><mn mathvariant="normal">0.1</mn><msup><mi/><mo>∘</mo></msup></mrow></math><span><svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="52pt" height="11pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="0c30464444980c5c328fe69989ce4832"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="essd-12-563-2020-ie00003.svg" width="52pt" height="11pt" src="essd-12-563-2020-ie00003.png"/></svg:svg></span></span> resolution and resolves the subsectors of oil and gas
exploitation, from upstream to downstream, and the different emission
processes (leakage, venting, flaring). Global emissions for 2016 are 41.5 Tg a<span class="inline-formula"><sup>−1</sup></span> for oil, 24.4 Tg a<span class="inline-formula"><sup>−1</sup></span> for gas, and 31.3 Tg a<span class="inline-formula"><sup>−1</sup></span> for coal.
An array of databases is used to spatially allocate national emissions to
infrastructure, including wells, pipelines, oil refineries, gas processing
plants, gas compressor stations, gas storage facilities, and coal mines.
Gridded error estimates are provided in normal and lognormal forms based on
emission factor uncertainties from the IPCC. Our inventory shows large
differences with the EDGAR v4.3.2 global gridded inventory both at the
national scale and in finer-scale spatial allocation. It shows good
agreement with the gridded version of the United Kingdom's National
Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI). There are significant errors on the
<span class="inline-formula"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M6" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow><mn mathvariant="normal">0.1</mn><msup><mi/><mo>∘</mo></msup><mo>×</mo><mn mathvariant="normal">0.1</mn><msup><mi/><mo>∘</mo></msup></mrow></math><span><svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="52pt" height="11pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="715481ff0951689c9e743095b0b9287e"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="essd-12-563-2020-ie00004.svg" width="52pt" height="11pt" src="essd-12-563-2020-ie00004.png"/></svg:svg></span></span> grid associated with the location and magnitude
of large point sources, but these are smoothed out when averaging the
inventory over a coarser grid. Use of our inventory as prior estimate in
inverse analyses of atmospheric methane observations allows investigation of
individual subsector contributions and can serve policy needs by evaluating
the national emissions totals reported to the UNFCCC. Gridded data sets can
be accessed at <a href="https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/HH4EUM">https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/HH4EUM</a> (Scarpelli et al., 2019).</p> |
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| ISSN: | 1866-3508 1866-3516 |