Biofuel emissions

This page describes the biofuel emissions inventories in GEOS-Chem.

Yevich & Logan inventory

The default biofuel inventory in GEOS-Chem is the Yevich & Logan [2003] inventory. This can be overwritten by the EPA/NEI99 biofuel emissions over North America and/or by the Streets 2006 regional inventory over China/SE Asia.

Abstract from Yevich & Logan [2003]:

We present an assessment of biofuel use and agricultural field burning in the developing world. We used information from government statistics, energy assessments from the World Bank, and many technical reports, as well as from discussions with experts in agronomy, forestry, and agro-industries. We estimate that 2060 Tg biomass fuel was used in the developing world in 1985; of this, 66% was burned in Asia, and 21% and 13% in Africa and Latin America, respectively. Agricultural waste supplies about 33% of total biofuel use, providing 39%, 29%, and 13% of biofuel use in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and 41% and 51% of the biofuel use in India and China.We find that 400 Tg of crop residues are burned in the fields, with the fraction of available residue burned in 1985 ranging from 1% in China, 16–30% in the Middle East and India, to about 70% in Indonesia; in Africa about 1% residue is burned in the fields of the northern drylands, but up to 50% in the humid tropics. We distributed this biomass burning on a spatial grid with resolution of 1° x 1° and applied emission factors to the amount of dry matter burned to give maps of trace gas emissions in the developing world. The emissions of CO from biofuel use in the developing world, 156 Tg, are about 50% of the estimated global CO emissions from fossil fuel use and industry. The emission of 0.9 Pg C (as CO2) from burning of biofuels and field residues together is small, but nonnegligible when compared with the emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel use and industry, 5.3 Pg C. The biomass burning source of 10 Tg/yr for CH4 and 2.2 Tg N/yr of NOx are relatively small when compared with total CH4 and NOx sources; this source of NOx may be important on a regional basis.

Important note: The Yevich & Logan 2003 inventory does not contain biofuels over the continental US, as these were historically included in the US gridded inventories of the time from EPA (NAPAP). If you wish to include biofuels over this region, you should make sure that the EPA/NEI99 or EPA/NEI05 emission inventories are switched on.

--Bob Y. 10:13, 8 February 2011 (EST)

EPA/NEI99 inventory

For more invormation about the biofuel emissions in the EPA/NEI99 inventory, we invite you to read our EPA/NEI99 North American emissions wiki page.

EPA/NEI05 inventory

For more information about the biofuel emissions options available in the EPA/NEI05 North American emissions inventory, please see our EPA/NEI05 North American emissions wiki page.

--Bob Y. 11:12, 8 February 2011 (EST)

David Streets

The David Streets 2006 regional emissions inventory lumps anthropogenic and biofuel emissions together. Therefore, when you use this inventory, you must zero out the biofuel emissions. This is done in the streets_anthro_mod.f already.

Double counting of Streets biofuel emissions over Asia

Please see this wiki post about a bug that was discovered in GEOS-Chem v9-01-01 that resulted in a double-counting of David Streets biofuel emissions over Asia. This issue will be corrected in GEOS-Chem v9-01-02.

--Bob Y. 10:41, 18 February 2011 (EST)

Bond et al 2007 inventory

GEOS-Chem uses the Tami Bond et al (2007) inventory for biofuel emissions of black carbon and organic carbon. For more information about this inventory, please see our carbonaceous aerosols wiki page.

RETRO and RCP inventories

This issue will likely be resolved by the implementation of the new HEMCO emissions component into GEOS-Chem. (Bob Yantosca, 05 Feb 2013)

Chris Holmes wrote:

The RETRO and RCP inventories do not distinguish emissions from biofuel and fossil fuel. Emissions from both are combined in the RETRO and RCP input files and in the ND36 (ANTHSRCE) diagnostic. When using the RETRO or RCP global inventories, the default biofuel inventory (Yevich and Logan, 2003) is set to zero everywhere globally. When any of the regional inventories without biofuels overwrite the RETRO or RCP global inventory, then biofuels within the region are NOT included in GEOS-Chem because the biofuel inventory has been zeroed. All anthropogenic species (NOx, CO, VOCs, BC, OC, SO2, NH3) are affected when using RCP emissions. Only VOC emissions are affected when using RETRO.

--Bob Y. 10:57, 10 January 2013 (EST)

References

1. Bond, T.C. et al, Historical emissions of black and organic carbon aerosol from energy-related combustion, 1850-2000, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 21, GB2018, doi: 10.1029/2006GB002840, 2007.
2. INTEX-B, http://mic.greenresource.cn/intex-b2006; or http://www.cgrer.uiowa.edu/EMISSION_DATA_new/index_16.html
3. Zhang, Q., Streets, D. G., Carmichael, G. R., He, K. B., Huo, H., Kannari, A., Klimont, Z., Park, I. S., Reddy, S., Fu, J. S., Chen, D., Duan, L., Lei, Y., Wang, L. T., and Yao, Z. L.: Asian emissions in 2006 for the NASA INTEX-B mission, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 9, 5131-5153, 2009.
4. Yevich, R. and J. A. Logan, An assesment of biofuel use and burning of agricultural waste in the developing world, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 17(4), 1095, doi:10.1029/2002GB001952, 2003. PDF

--Bob Y. 10:54, 8 February 2011 (EST)