A New High-Resolution N2O Emission Inventory for China in 2008

The amount and geographic distribution of N2O emissions over China remain largely uncertain. In this study, county-level and 0.1° × 0.1° gridded anthropogenic N2O emission inventories for China (PKU-N2O) in 2008 are developed based on high-resolution activity data and regional emission factors (EFs) and parameters. These new estimates are compared with previous inventories, and with two sensitivity tests: one that uses high-resolution activity data but the default IPCC methodology (S1) and the other that uses regional EFs and parameters but starts from coarser-resolution activity data. The total N2O emissions are 2150 GgN2O/yr (interquartile range from 1174 to 2787 GgN2O/yr). Agriculture contributes 64% of the total, followed by energy (17%), indirect emissions (12%), wastes (5%), industry (2.8%), and wildfires (0.2%). Our national emission total is 17% greater than that of the EDGAR v4.2 global product sampled over China and is also greater than the GAINS-China, NDRC, and S1 estimates by 10%, 50%, and 17%, respectively. We also found that using uniform EFs and parameters or starting from national/provincial data causes systematic spatial biases compared to PKU-N2O. Spatial analysis shows nonlinear relationships between N2O emission intensities and urbanization. Per-capita and per-GDP N2O emissions increase gradually with an increase in the urban population fraction from 0.3 to 0.9 among 2884 counties, and N2O emission density increases with urban expansion.