SPECIATED MULTIPOLLUTANT GENERATOR
Under current climate actions comprising national pledges to reduce emissions, or the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), global warming is expected to surpass 1.5 °C. Recent studies have highlighted the need urgency to supplement greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation with that of warming short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), including methane, CH4; black carbon, BC, and ozone,O3. Moreover, stringent air quality policies may lead to increasing warming due to decreases in cooling SLCPs (SO2 and NOX) thereby, placing an additional burden on CO2 mitigation measures.
The SMoG-India emission inventory creates a baseline for India emissions of SLCPs, air pollutants, and GHGs to provide a platform for near-term climate and air quality assessment. The SMoG-India platform goes beyond the few existing public national inventory (such as India GHG program, GHG platform India and India Energy Security Scenarios 2047) which only address GHGs. It represents one of the first systems to provide publicly available dataset on air pollutants, SLCPs and GHGs for India. Importantly, it provides spatio-temporally resolved emissions for inputs to estimate air quality and climate impacts, evaluate the progress of on-going programs and serve as a baseline to estimate mitigation potential of future interventions.
SMoG-India includes air pollutants (primary PM2.5; organic carbon, OC; SO2 ; CO; ozone precursors NOX, NMVOCs), warming SLCPs (methane, CH4; black carbon, BC) and GHGs ( CO2 , N2O ). SMoG-India uses an engineering model approach employing technology-emissions modeling. An engineering model approach goes beyond fuel divisions and uses technology parameters for process and emissions control technologies, including technology type, efficiency or specific fuel consumption, and technology-linked emission factors (g of pollutant/kg of fuel) to estimate emissions. The SMoG-India integrated platform combines a database management system, an emission calculator module embedded with robust sectoral methodologies, and a query-based web interface for visualization (Figure 1). The system aims to handle, process, and archive large datasets involved in a multi-sector, multi-pollutant emissions inventory with a cogent representation of results.
Figure 1. SMoG-India emission inventory and scenario platform
Available on request: SMoG-India-v1 offers public download of gridded Historical Emissions (1985-2015) and Hypothetical Future Scenarios (2015-2050). The data are spatially resolved into 0.25 deg x 0.25 deg. They are available in "CSV" format as text files along with a "README" describing the details of the emissions.SMoG-India includes energy, industry, transport, residential, agricultural residue burning, and distributed diesel (diesel generator sets, agricultural tractors, and irrigation pumps) sectors please see (Table 1) for reference.
Table 1. Monthly gridded (25 x 25 km) emissions are estimated for the following sectors:
| Gridding sectors | Sectors | Source Categories |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic (dom) | Domestic and commercial | Residential Cooking biomass Residential Cooking kero / LPG Residential Space Heating Residential Water Heating Residential Lighting Diesel Gensets |
| Agricultural combustion (agc) | Agricultural combustion | Open burning of crop residue Agricultural Tractors Agricultural Pumps |
| Energy (ene) | Electricity generation | Thermal power plant |
| Industry (ind) | Industry | Heavy Industry Light Industry Brick Production informal Industry |
| Transportation (tra) | On-road Transport Railways | On-road Gasoline/CNG On-Road Diesel Railways |
Under development: SMoG-India-v2 aims to remove deficiencies and improve accuracy in sectors including residential (with the addition of non-cooking residential activities), agricultural stubble burning, brick production, industry and transport, while developing a multi-sector emission inventory management system including these sectors along with energy, distributed diesel (diesel generator sets, tractors and irrigation pumps) and informal industry.
Register and request gridded emission files:
References
- Sadavarte, P. and C. Venkataraman (2014) Trends in multi-pollutant emissions from a technology-linked inventory for India I.Industry and transport sectors, Atmospheric Environment, 99, pp.353-364, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2014.09.081
- Pandey, A., P. Sadavarte, A.B. Rao and C. Venkataraman (2014) A technology-linked multi-pollutant inventory of Indian energy-use emissions: II. Residential, agricultural and informal industry sectors, Atmospheric Environment,99, pp.341-352, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2014.09.080
- Venkataraman, C., Brauer, M., Tibrewal, K., Sadavarte, P., Ma, Q., Cohen, A., Chaliyakunnel, S., Frostad, J., Klimont, Z. Martin, R. V., Millet, D. B., Philip, S., Walker, K., and Wang, S. (2018) Source influence on emission pathways and ambient PM2.5 pollution over India (2015–2050), Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 8017-8039, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-8017-2018
- David, L.M., A. R. Ravishankara, J. K. Kodros, J. R. Pierce, C. Venkataraman and Pankaj Sadavarte (2018) Premature Mortality Due to PM2.5 Over India: Effect of Atmospheric Transport and Anthropogenic Emissions, GeoHealth, 3, 2–10, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GH000169.
- Tibrewal, K. and C. Venkataraman (2020) Climate co-benefits of air quality and clean energy policy in India, Nature Sustainability, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00666-3.
- Tibrewal, K. and C. Venkataraman (2021) COVID-19 lockdown closures of emissions sources in India: Lessons for air quality and climate policy, J. Envtl. Mgmt.,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.114079