Cities, traffic, and CO2: A multidecadal assessment of trends, drivers, and scaling relationships
Abstract
Emissions of CO2 from road vehicles were 1.57 billion metric tons in 2012, accounting for 28% of US fossil fuel CO2 emissions, but the spatial distributions of these emissions are highly uncertain. We develop a new emissions inventory, the Database of Road Transportation Emissions (DARTE), which estimates CO2 emitted by US road transport at a resolution of 1 km annually for 1980-2012. DARTE reveals that urban areas are responsible for 80% of on-road emissions growth since 1980 and for 63% of total 2012 emissions. We observe nonlinearities between CO2 emissions and population density at broad spatial/temporal scales, with total on-road CO2 increasing nonlinearly with population density, rapidly up to 1,650 persons per square kilometer and slowly thereafter. Per capita emissions decline as density rises, but at markedly varying rates depending on existing densities. Here, we make use of DARTE's bottom-up construction to highlight the biases associated with the common practice of using population as a linear proxy for disaggregating national- or state-scale emissions. Comparing DARTE with existing downscaled inventories, we find biases of 100% or more in the spatial distribution of urban and rural emissions, largely driven by mismatches between inventory downscaling proxies and the actual spatial patterns of vehiclemore »
- Authors:
-
- Boston Univ., MA (United States). Dept. of Earth and Environment
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Boston Univ., MA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1348401
- Grant/Contract Number:
- FG02-06ER64204; NNX12AM82G; NNH13CK02C; 1149471; 1430145; 1038907
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 112; Journal Issue: 16; Journal ID: ISSN 0027-8424
- Publisher:
- National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (United States)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; carbon dioxide; emissions; on-road; transportation; urban
Citation Formats
Gately, Conor K., Hutyra, Lucy R., and Sue Wing, Ian. Cities, traffic, and CO2: A multidecadal assessment of trends, drivers, and scaling relationships. United States: N. p., 2015.
Web. doi:10.1073/pnas.1421723112.
Gately, Conor K., Hutyra, Lucy R., & Sue Wing, Ian. Cities, traffic, and CO2: A multidecadal assessment of trends, drivers, and scaling relationships. United States. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1421723112
Gately, Conor K., Hutyra, Lucy R., and Sue Wing, Ian. Mon .
"Cities, traffic, and CO2: A multidecadal assessment of trends, drivers, and scaling relationships". United States. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1421723112. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1348401.
@article{osti_1348401,
title = {Cities, traffic, and CO2: A multidecadal assessment of trends, drivers, and scaling relationships},
author = {Gately, Conor K. and Hutyra, Lucy R. and Sue Wing, Ian},
abstractNote = {Emissions of CO2 from road vehicles were 1.57 billion metric tons in 2012, accounting for 28% of US fossil fuel CO2 emissions, but the spatial distributions of these emissions are highly uncertain. We develop a new emissions inventory, the Database of Road Transportation Emissions (DARTE), which estimates CO2 emitted by US road transport at a resolution of 1 km annually for 1980-2012. DARTE reveals that urban areas are responsible for 80% of on-road emissions growth since 1980 and for 63% of total 2012 emissions. We observe nonlinearities between CO2 emissions and population density at broad spatial/temporal scales, with total on-road CO2 increasing nonlinearly with population density, rapidly up to 1,650 persons per square kilometer and slowly thereafter. Per capita emissions decline as density rises, but at markedly varying rates depending on existing densities. Here, we make use of DARTE's bottom-up construction to highlight the biases associated with the common practice of using population as a linear proxy for disaggregating national- or state-scale emissions. Comparing DARTE with existing downscaled inventories, we find biases of 100% or more in the spatial distribution of urban and rural emissions, largely driven by mismatches between inventory downscaling proxies and the actual spatial patterns of vehicle activity at urban scales. Here, given cities' dual importance as sources of CO2 and an emerging nexus of climate mitigation initiatives, high-resolution estimates such as DARTE are critical both for accurately quantifying surface carbon fluxes and for verifying the effectiveness of emissions mitigation efforts at urban scales.},
doi = {10.1073/pnas.1421723112},
journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
number = 16,
volume = 112,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Apr 06 00:00:00 EDT 2015},
month = {Mon Apr 06 00:00:00 EDT 2015}
}
Web of Science
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