Improving the spatiotemporal representation of anthropogenic CO2 and co-emitted species to support verification using earth observations

A correct representation of the spatial and temporal distribution of anthropogenic emissions is important for verification of global CO₂ emissions through current and future satellite emission monitoring. This work presents the results derived from the CoCO2 and CORSO Horizon Europe projects on improving the spatiotemporal representation of CO₂ and co-emitted anthropogenic bottom-up emissions (i.e., CO, NOx) as part of the CO₂ Monitoring and Verification Support capacity (CO2MVS) developments. The global CO2MVS system is envisioned to become a part of the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). To improve the emission timing, we built a new set of activity and meteorology based global temporal profiles for the road transport, residential combustion, aviation, shipping and energy industry sectors. Their associated uncertainty is quantified by creating an ensemble of profiles from different years / countries / oceans and seas, so that the full range of possibilities is included. Regarding the improvement of the spatial representation, we constructed a global point source emission catalogue that contains emission information for individual facilities at their exact geographical location. The two developed datasets were compared against state-of-the-art bottom-up emission inventories that are widely used in modelling efforts, including the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), as well as independent TROPOMI satellite-based estimates for the co-emitted species. Main discrepancies between datasets were found in developing regions where information to derive bottom-up emissions such as energy use or pollution control strategies is still poorly characterized, indicating the need to complement the information with top-down estimates.