Assessing fossil fuel CO₂ emissions in California using atmospheric observations and models
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Analysis systems incorporating atmospheric observations could provide a powerful tool for validating fossil fuel CO2 (ffCO2) emissions reported for individual regions, provided that fossil fuel sources can be separated from other CO2 sources or sinks and atmospheric transport can be accurately accounted for. We quantified ffCO2 by measuring radiocarbon (14C) in CO2, an accurate fossil-carbon tracer, at nine observation sites in California for three months in 2014–15. There is strong agreement between the measurements and ffCO2 simulated using a high-resolution atmospheric model and a spatiotemporally-resolved fossil fuel flux estimate. Inverse estimates of total in-state ffCO2 emissions are consistent with the California Air Resources Board's reported ffCO2 emissions, providing tentative validation of California's reported ffCO2 emissions in 2014–15. Continuing this prototype analysis system could provide critical independent evaluation of reported ffCO2 emissions and emissions reductions in California, and the system could be expanded to other, more data-poor regions.
Date Issued
2018-06-01
Date Acceptance
2018-04-11
Citation
Environmental Research Letters, 2018, 13 (6)
ISSN
1748-9326
Publisher
Institute of Physics (IoP)
Journal / Book Title
Environmental Research Letters
Volume
13
Issue
6
Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. Original content from
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under the terms of the
Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 licence
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Any further distribution
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the author(s) and the
title of the work, journal
citation and DOI
this work may be used
under the terms of the
Creative Commons
Attribution 3.0 licence
.
Any further distribution
of this work must
maintain attribution to
the author(s) and the
title of the work, journal
citation and DOI
Sponsor
Commission of the European Communities
Grant Number
631578
Subjects
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Physical Sciences
Environmental Sciences
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
carbon dioxide
fossil fuel emissions
California
atmospheric inversion
radiocarbon
FLUXES
SYSTEM
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 065007
Date Publish Online
2018-05-31