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A self-consistent global emissions inventory spanning 1850-2050 – why we need one and why we do not have one
Citation:
Wagstrom, K. AND S. Hunt. A self-consistent global emissions inventory spanning 1850-2050 – why we need one and why we do not have one. AAAR Annual Conference, Portland, OR, September 30 - October 04, 2013.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of this poster presentation will be to provide background on the state of the science for the temporal and spatial scale of emissions inventories and to express needs and potential research directions in hopes of motivating future work.
Description:
While emissions inventory development has advanced significantly in recent years, the scientific community still lacks a global inventory utilizing consistent estimation approaches spanning multiple centuries. In this analysis, we investigate the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches to effectively address inventory development over not just a global spatial scale but also a timescale spanning two centuries – from early industrialization into the near future. We discuss the need within the scientific community for a dataset such as this and the landscape of questions it would allow the scientific community to address. In particular, we focus on questions that the scientific community cannot adequately address using the currently available techniques and information.We primarily focus on the difficulties and potential obstacles associated with developing an inventory of this scope and magnitude. We discuss many of the hurdles that the field has already overcome and also highlight the challenges that researchers in the field still face. We detail the complexities related to the extent of spatial and temporal scales required for an undertaking of this magnitude. In addition, we point to areas where the community currently lacks the necessary data to move forward. Our analysis focuses on one direction in which the development of global emissions inventories is heading rather than an in-depth analysis of the path of emissions inventory development thus far. We intend for this analysis to provide an overview to aide researchers currently working on inventory development as the science continues to advance.
