Regional Analysis

Advances in Simulating the Global Spatial Heterogeneity of Air Quality and Source Sector Contributions: Insights into the Global South

Abstract: High-resolution simulations are essential to resolve fine-scale air pollution patterns due to localized emissions, nonlinear chemical feedbacks, and complex meteorology. However, high-resolution global simulations of air quality remain rare, especially of the Global South. Here, we exploit recent developments to the GEOS-Chem community model in its high performance implementation (GCHP) to conduct one-year simulations in 2015 at cubed-sphere C360 (~ 25km) and C48 (~ 200km) resolutions. We investigate the resolution dependence of population exposure and sectoral contributions to surface PM2.5 and NO2 focusing on understudied regions. Our results indicate pronounced spatial heterogeneity with global mean population-weighted normalized root mean square error (PW-NRMSE) at C48 of for primary (50% - 105%) and secondary (26% - 36%) PM2.5 species. Under-represented regions are more sensitive to spatial resolution resulting from sparse pollution hotspots, with PW-NRMSE for PM2.5 in the Global South (34%) 1.3 times higher than globally (25%). The spatial heterogeneity in southern cities (50%) is substantially higher than the more typically clustered northern cities (27%). High-resolution simulations also change the relative importance of emission sectors for both black carbon and NO2 in the Global South. Overall, spatial gradients of population exposure and sectoral contributions are artificially reduced with coarse simulations, especially in the Global South.

Increase in global and East Asia Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) emissions inferred from atmospheric observations

Abstract: Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) is a very powerful long-lived greenhouse gas (GHG), with a global warming potential on a 100-year timescale of ∼16,600. NF3 is widely used in the manufacture of semiconductors, photovoltaic (PV) cells, and flat panel displays. Here we investigate global and regional NF3 emission rates in East Asia, using atmospheric observations from five AGAGE background monitoring stations (Mace Head, Ireland Trinidad Head, California, Ragged Point, Barbados, Cape Grim, Tasmania, Cape Matatula, Samoa) and Gosan, South Korea combined with an inverse modeling approach based on the global 3-D atmospheric chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem). We find that global NF3 emissions have grown from 1.73 0.13 Gg yr-1 ( one standard deviation) in 2014 to 2.91 0.23 Gg yr-1 in 2020, with an average annual increase of 8% yr-1. This rise in global emission is mainly attributable to East Asia (South China, Northeast China, Japan, and South Korea), where emissions increased from 1.4 0.86 Gg yr-1 to 1.49 Gg yr-1. Due to increasing demand for electronic device manufacture, especially flat panel displays, NF3 emissions are expected to increase further in the future.

To achieve a stable climate will require rapid, dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities. This can be done by transitioning energy generation from fossil fuels to clean energy sources, and by removing those gases—primarily carbon dioxide (CO2)— from the atmosphere. The latter approach relies on the development of technologies that capture the gas from the air and store it underground, and the cultivation of “nature-based solutions” that increase ground-level absorption of airborne CO2.

Tapping the land for climate solutions
Assessing Compounding Risks Across Multiple Systems and Sectors: A Socio-Environmental Systems Risk-Triage Approach

Abstract: Physical and societal risks across the natural, managed, and built environments are becoming increasingly complex, multi-faceted, and compounding. Such risks stem from socio-economic and environmental stresses that co-evolve and force tipping points and instabilities. Robust decision-making necessitates extensive analyses and model assessments for insights toward solutions.  However, these exercises are consumptive in terms of computational and investigative resources. In practical terms, such exercises cannot be performed extensively – but selectively in terms of priority and scale. Therefore, an efficient analysis platform is needed through which the variety of multi-systems/sector observational and simulated data can be readily incorporated, combined, diagnosed, visualized, and in doing so, identifies “hotspots” of salient compounding threats. In view of this, we have constructed a “triage-based” visualization and data-sharing platform – the Socio-Environmental Systems Risk Triage (SESRT) – that brings together data across socio-environmental systems, economics, demographics, health, biodiversity, and infrastructure. Through the SESRT website, users can display risk indices that result from weighted combinations of risk metrics they can select. Currently, these risk metrics include land-, water-, and energy systems, biodiversity, as well as demographics, environmental equity, and transportation networks. We highlight the utility of the SESRT platform through several demonstrative analyses over the United States from the national to county level. The SESRT is an open-science tool and available to the community-at-large.  We will continue to develop it with an open, accessible, and interactive approach, including academics, researchers, industry, and the general public.

 

Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons, James Marvin Phelps

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