Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Global Anthropogenic Sulfur Emissions Updated to 2011

A new article by Zbigniew Klimont, Steven Smith, and Janusz Cofala updates Smith et al.'s estimates of global sulfur emissions to 2011. The global downward trend that started around 1990 or earlier * continues. The small increase in the early part of the last decade was just a blip:

This chart also shows some previous estimates. In general the trend has been revised down over time. The trend in China is also now heading down:

Another paper by Smith and Bond declares "the end of the age of aerosols". Well not quite yet. We'll have to wait till 2100 for that :)

The downside for me of this new data is that I will now have to redo all the econometrics in a paper I have in preparation (with Robert Kaufmann) that was almost ready for submission :(


* As shown in my 2006 paper, studies prior to Smith et al. 2001 showed emissions continuing to grow strongly through 1990. Smith et al. (2001) showed a flattening of the trend in the 1980s. My paper showed a plateau from the mid-1970s to 1990 and Smith et al. (2011) showed a slow downward trend from 1973 to 1990 and then a steeper decline.

No comments:

Post a Comment