Spatial Disaggregation of Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventory Data for Africa South of the Equator

Author: Gavin Fleming
Organization: CSIR

Box 395
Pretoria, 0001
South Africa

Phone: 011 841-2489
Fax: 011 841-2028
GFleming@csir.co.za

The aim of this project was to spatially disaggregate 1990 emissions inventory data to a 20 km grid for Africa south of the equator and temporally extrapolate them on a monthly basis for the period 1999 to 2001. Southern Africa experiences a relatively closed atmospheric circulation that recirculates air over the subcontinent. Emissions from one region are therefore transported and deposited in other regions of southern Africa. There are several studies underway that aim to identify emission hot spots, understand emission-transportation-deposition dynamics, and close the budgets of various nutrient cycles, especially that of nitrogen. These studies and the models they use require as input spatially and temporally disaggregated emission data. For most of the region the best available emissions data is that published for 1990 national emissions inventories by signatory countries to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The inventories state emissions of several greenhouse gas species on a sectoral basis and were developed independently by each country. Emissions from each sector, such as transport or electricity generation, were treated differently. ArcInfo and ARC GRID were used to model area and linear sources and to spatially disaggregate the emissions to known point sources, the modeled areal sources, and the modeled linear transport sources. Emissions of each species were then extrapolated for the period 1999-2001 and decomposed into monthly figures, then totaled over all sectors.