Identification

Title

Unexpected slowdown of US pollutant emission reduction in the past decade

Abstract

Ground and satellite observations show that air pollution regulations in the United States (US) have resulted in substantial reductions in emissions and corresponding improvements in air quality over the last several decades. However, large uncertainties remain in evaluating how recent regulations affect different emission sectors and pollutant trends. Here we show a significant slowdown in decreasing US emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO) for 2011-2015 using satellite and surface measurements. This observed slowdown in emission reductions is significantly different from the trend expected using US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bottom-up inventories and impedes compliance with local and federal agency air-quality goals. We find that the difference between observations and EPA's NOx emission estimates could be explained by: (i) growing relative contributions of industrial, area, and off-road sources, (ii) decreasing relative contributions of on-road gasoline, and (iii) slower than expected decreases in on-road diesel emissions.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d70p12sj

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-05-15T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact