Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA.
Nat Commun. 2023 Mar 23;14(1):1604. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-37264-8.
Quantifying the coevolution of greenhouse gases and air quality pollutants can provide insight into underlying anthropogenic processes enabling predictions of their emission trajectories. Here, we classify the dynamics of historic emissions in terms of a modified Environmental Kuznets Curve (MEKC), which postulates the coevolution of fossil fuel CO (FFCO) and NOx emissions as a function of macroeconomic development. The MEKC broadly captures the historic FFCO-NO dynamical regimes for countries including the US, China, and India as well as IPCC scenarios. Given these dynamics, we find the predictive skill of FFCO2 given NO emissions constrained by satellite data is less than 2% error at one-year lags for many countries and less than 10% for 4-year lags. The proposed framework in conjunction with an increasing satellite constellation provides valuable guidance to near-term emission scenario development and evaluation at time-scales relevant to international assessments such as the Global Stocktake.
量化温室气体和空气质量污染物的共同演变可以深入了解潜在的人为过程，从而预测它们的排放轨迹。在这里，我们根据修正的环境库兹涅茨曲线（MEKC）对历史排放的动态进行分类，该曲线假设化石燃料 CO（FFCO）和 NOx 排放的共同演变是宏观经济发展的函数。MEKC 广泛地捕捉了包括美国、中国和印度在内的国家以及 IPCC 情景的历史 FFCO-NO 动态。鉴于这些动态，我们发现，对于许多国家，在一年的滞后时间内，由卫星数据约束的 NO 排放所预测的 FFCO2 的预测精度误差小于 2%，而在四年的滞后时间内，预测精度误差小于 10%。该框架与不断增加的卫星星座一起，为与国际评估（如全球盘点）相关的时间尺度内的近期排放情景开发和评估提供了有价值的指导。
