Four decades of full-scale nitrous oxide emission inventory in China

Minqi Liang; Zheyan Zhou; Peiyang Ren; Han Xiao; Xu-Ri; Zhongmin Hu; Shilong Piao; Hanqin Tian; Qing Tong; Feng Zhou; Jing Wei; Wenping Yuan

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwad285

Four decades of full-scale nitrous oxide emission inventory in China

Natl Sci Rev. 2023 Nov 6;11(3):nwad285. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwad285. eCollection 2024 Mar.

Authors

Minqi Liang¹, Zheyan Zhou¹, Peiyang Ren¹, Han Xiao¹, Xu-Ri², Zhongmin Hu³, Shilong Piao⁴, Hanqin Tian⁵, Qing Tong⁶, Feng Zhou⁴, Jing Wei^{1

7}, Wenping Yuan^{1

7}

Affiliations

¹ School of Atmospheric Sciences, Guangdong Province Data Center of Terrestrial and Marine Ecosystems Carbon Cycle, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai 510245, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
³ Key Laboratory of Agro-Forestry Environmental Processes and Ecological Regulation of Hainan Province, Hainan University, Haikou 570228, China.
⁴ Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
⁵ Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.
⁶ Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
⁷ Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai 519082, China.

Abstract

China is among the top nitrous oxide (N₂O)-emitting countries, but existing national inventories do not provide full-scale emissions including both natural and anthropogenic sources. We conducted a four-decade (1980-2020) of comprehensive quantification of Chinese N₂O inventory using empirical emission factor method for anthropogenic sources and two up-to-date process-based models for natural sources. Total N₂O emissions peaked at 2287.4 (1774.8-2799.9) Gg N₂O yr^-1 in 2018, and agriculture-developed regions, like the East, Northeast, and Central, were the top N₂O-emitting regions. Agricultural N₂O emissions have started to decrease after 2016 due to the decline of nitrogen fertilization applications, while, industrial and energetic sources have been dramatically increasing after 2005. N₂O emissions from agriculture, industry, energy, and waste represented 49.3%, 26.4%, 17.5%, and 6.7% of the anthropogenic emissions in 2020, respectively, which revealed that it is imperative to prioritize N₂O emission mitigation in agriculture, industry, and energy. Natural N₂O sources, dominated by forests, have been steadily growing from 317.3 (290.3-344.1) Gg N₂O yr^-1 in 1980 to 376.2 (335.5-407.2) Gg N₂O yr^-1 in 2020. Our study produces a Full-scale Annual N₂O dataset in China (FAN2020), providing emergent counting to refine the current national N₂O inventories.

Keywords: anthropogenic sources; four decades; natural sources; nitrous oxide.