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Title: Assessing fossil fuel CO2 emissions in California using atmospheric observations and models

Journal Article · · Environmental Research Letters
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [3];  [2];  [4];  [3];  [5];  [1];  [6];  [2];  [7];  [8];  [5];  [9];  [5];  [10];  [11];  [3]; ORCiD logo [12];  [6] more »;  [3] « less
  1. Imperial College, London (United Kingdom)
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  3. Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States)
  4. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  5. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-CA), Livermore, CA (United States)
  6. Earth Networks, Germantown, MD (United States)
  7. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  8. Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States)
  9. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
  10. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Boulder, CO (United States)
  11. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States); Bay Area Air Quality Management District, San Francisco, CA (United States)
  12. Jet Propulsion Lab., Pasadena, CA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

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.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-CA), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; AC04-94AL85000; AC52-07NA27344
OSTI ID:
1461158
Report Number(s):
LLNL-JRNL--749439; SAND--2018-9964J; ark:/13030/qt2024m44k
Journal Information:
Environmental Research Letters, Journal Name: Environmental Research Letters Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 13; ISSN 1748-9326
Publisher:
IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (25)

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Verification of greenhouse gas emission reductions: the prospect of atmospheric monitoring in polluted areas
  • Levin, Ingeborg; Hammer, Samuel; Eichelmann, Elke
  • Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 369, Issue 1943 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0249
journal May 2011
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Toward consistency between trends in bottom-up CO 2 emissions and top-down atmospheric measurements in the Los Angeles megacity journal January 2016
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Cited By (7)

Human Activity Recorded in Carbon Isotopic Composition of Atmospheric CO 2 in Gliwice Urban Area and Surroundings (Southern Poland) in the Years 2011–2013 journal August 2019
Detection of Fossil and Biogenic Methane at Regional Scales Using Atmospheric Radiocarbon journal March 2019
Source Sector Attribution of CO 2 Emissions Using an Urban CO/CO 2 Bayesian Inversion System journal December 2018
Anthropogenic Methane Emission and Its Partitioning for the Yangtze River Delta Region of China journal May 2019
Accounting for the vertical distribution of emissions in atmospheric CO2 simulations text January 2019
Characterizing uncertainties in atmospheric inversions of fossil fuel CO2 emissions in California journal January 2019
Accounting for the vertical distribution of emissions in atmospheric CO2 simulations journal January 2019

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Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
California
atmospheric inversion
carbon dioxide
fossil fuel emissions
radiocarbon