Increase in global emissions of HFC-23 despite near-total expected reductions

Details

• Journal Title:
  Nature Communications
• Personal Author:
  Stanley, K. M. ; Say, D. ; Mühle, J. ; Harth, C. M. ; Krummel, P. B. ; Young, D. ; O’Doherty, S. J. ; Salameh, P. K. ; Simmonds, P. G. ; Weiss, R. F. ; Prinn, R. G. ; Fraser, P. J. ; Rigby, M.
• Description:
  Under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, new controls are being implemented to reduce emissions of HFC-23 (CHF3), a by-product during the manufacture of HCFC-22 (CHClF2). Starting in 2015, China and India, who dominate global HCFC-22 production (75% in 2017), set out ambitious programs to reduce HFC-23 emissions. Here, we estimate that these measures should have seen global emissions drop by 87% between 2014 and 2017. Instead, atmospheric observations show that emissions have increased and in 2018 were higher than at any point in history (15.9 ± 0.9 Gg yr−1). Given the magnitude of the discrepancy between expected and observation-inferred emissions, it is likely that the reported reductions have not fully materialized or there may be substantial unreported production of HCFC-22, resulting in unaccounted-for HFC-23 by-product emissions. The difference between reported and observation-inferred estimates suggests that an additional ~309 Tg CO2-equivalent emissions were added to the atmosphere between 2015 and 2017.
• Source:
  Nat Commun. 2020 Jan 21;11(1):397.
• DOI:
  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13899-4
• Pubmed ID:
  31964859
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC6972758
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  Contract no. RA-133-R15-CN-0008
• Rights Information:
  CC BY
• Compliance:
  PMC
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:a803faeff48f8cb9ce027ef83a1f5740fee199bd97e9c342d9723887001dfb8c
• Download URL:
  https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/27587/noaa_27587_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 999.89 KB ]