Black Carbon Emissions in China from 1949 to 2050

Abstract

Black carbon (BC) emissions from China are of global concern. A new BC emission inventory (PKU-BC(China)) has been developed with the following improvements: (1) The emission factor database was updated; (2) a 0.1° × 0.1° gridded map was produced for 2007 based on county-level proxies; (3) time trends were derived for 1949-2007 and predicted for 2008-2050; and (4) the uncertainties associated with the inventory were quantified. It was estimated that 1957 Gg of BC were emitted in China in 2007, which is greater than previously reported. Residential coal combustion was the largest source, followed by residential biofuel burning, coke production, diesel vehicles, and brick kilns. By using a county-level disaggregation method, spatial bias in province-level disaggregation, mainly due to uneven per capita emissions within provinces, was reduced by 42.5%. Emissions increased steadily since 1949 until leveling off in the mid-1990s, due to a series of technological advances and to socioeconomic progress. BC emissions in China in 2050 are predicted to be 920-2183 Gg/yr under various scenarios; and the industrial and transportation sectors stand to benefit the most from technological improvements.

Measurements of emission factors of PM2.5, OC, EC, and BC for household stoves of coal combustion in China

“…Household stoves burning solid fuels (i.e., coal and biofuel) in China have been the subject of interest in recent years because they are important emission sources of various pollutants, including fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ), organic carbon (OC), black carbon (BC), greenhouse gases (GHGs), and toxic organic compounds such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), etc (Bond et al, 2004a;Lei et al, 2011;Ohara et al, 2007;Shen et al, 2013b;Streets et al, 2003;Wang et al, 2012;Zhang et al, 2009). Among these pollutants, BC is especially highlighted by governments and scientists for a variety of reasons (Bond et al, 2013).…”

“…First, China is considered the largest contributor to global BC burden. It was estimated that about 20% of global BC was contributed by China (Bond et al, 2004b) in which about 28% was emitted from household stoves for coal combustion (Wang et al, 2012). Second, these great amounts of BC emissions have been widely linked to the variation of precipitation trends in eastern China and the melting of Himalayas snowpack and glaciers over the past several decades, the significant reduction of visibility in northern China, and increased occurrence of serious haze events in eastern and northern China, etc (Menon et al, 2002;Ramanathan and Carmichael, 2008;Ramanathan et al, 2007;Xu et al, 2009).…”

Spatial distribution of black carbon emissions in China

“…Compared with results from Zhang et al [22], locally measured emission factors for the residential sector were updated and different ratios of residential coal types were used in our work, leading to discrepancies in residential emissions. Wang et al [28] divided residential coal into chunk coal and briquette, without considering emissions differences between bituminous and anthracite coals. Wang et al [28] also selected a higher BC emission factor and a larger consumption ratio of chunk coal, causing their estimates of residential emissions to be higher than ours.…”

“…Wang et al [28] divided residential coal into chunk coal and briquette, without considering emissions differences between bituminous and anthracite coals. Wang et al [28] also selected a higher BC emission factor and a larger consumption ratio of chunk coal, causing their estimates of residential emissions to be higher than ours. In addition, Lu et al [26] calculated transportation emissions using oil consumption data and updated emission factors on the basis of previous studies [18], which resulted in a higher estimation of vehicular emissions than our work.…”

“…Zhang et al [22] updated anthropogenic BC emission inventory for 2006 based on Street et al's study [23] by accounting for influences in technological progress and obtained a total BC emissions estimate of 1811 Gg. Some studies have estimated the multiyear BC emissions for China and presented their temporal variation [24][25][26][27][28]. However, due to the difficulty in collecting reliable activity data, and the lack of locally measured emission factors, these results still yielded large uncertainties.…”