2023-12-01 | MEIC Team
Anthropogenic carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution have been the main driver of current global climate change. Accurate estimate of the spatiotemporal distributions of anthropogenic carbon emissions, and construction of a global CO2 emission inventory with high quality, high resolution, and timely updates, have been one of the forefront issues in the fields of climate change and atmospheric science. This is also the solid foundation to support research on attribution of climate change, assessment of carbon budget, development of future scenarios, assessment of mitigation efforts, and targeted policymaking etc.
In this context, Tsinghua University cooperated with the team of China Emission Accounts and Datasets (CEADs), Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, and other research groups, to develop a data-driven approach and construct seamless and highly-resolved energy consumption data cubes for 208 countries/territories, 797 sub-country administrative divisions in 29 countries, 42 fuel types, and 52 sectors, with the fusion of activity data from 24 international statistics and 65 regional/local statistics. Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production were then estimated with highly-resolved source category (1,484 of total) and sub-country information (797 of total) (Figure 1). The corresponding article, titled “MEIC-global-CO2: A new global CO2 emission inventory with highly-resolved source category and sub-country information” were published online on November 30th in the journal “Science China Earth Sciences.”
Recently, MEIC team has released carbon emission data from fossil fuel combustion and cement production for 208 countries and territories globally, with highly-resolved source category (52 sectors, 42 fuel types and process emissions in cement industry). The data has been updated to the year 2022 (Figure 2). The results show that global anthropogenic CO2 emissions reached a record high in 2022 (35.2 Gt), with an annual growth rate of 0.9% in 2021-2022 that is close to the average annual growth rate from 2010 to 2022. If carbon emissions persist at this level, the remaining carbon budget for the global 1.5-degree target (approximately 330-430 Gt) will be depleted within 9-12 years. This poses a significant challenge to global climate governance and low-carbon transformation.
The MEIC website provides users with a variety of interactive features, including customized data map display, figure download, and data download services. We also offer convenient services for online dynamic computing, visualization analysis, and data download (Figure 3).
Users can download the previously described data after registering and logging in the MEIC website. Welcome to download the MEIC data and provide valuable feedbacks. The MEIC team welcomes communication and cooperation in various ways. Please contact us via meic@tsinghua.edu.cn.
Article link:
https://www.sciengine.com/SCES/doi/10.1007/s11430-023-1230-3