Research Progress

Discussions of Coordinated Emissions Research

Suggestions to Guide this Initiative• Focus on research emission inventories• Do not interfere with regulatory inventory development process• Build on existing approaches to emissions development and observation• Facilitate new directions in collaborative emissions research• Adapt emission products for research community• Encourage active feedback between development and observation groups• Encourage multiple approaches to development and evaluation• Bring an openness to new findings and encourage sharing of results• Assess resources needed for collaborative efforts• Carry out periodic synthesis activities and progress assessments

First Workshop, 4 December 2009, NOAA DSRC, Boulder, CO

Coordinated US Initiative on Emissions Research

Where We Are

Where We Want

to Go

Some Proposed Goals for this Initiative

First Workshop, 4 December 2009, NOAA DSRC, Boulder, CO

Coordinated US Initiative on Emissions Research

Enhance access to and usefulness of

emissions data

Evaluate inventories using multiple top-

down methods

Encourage exchange between evaluation and development

communities

Investigate impacts of emissions on AQ

and climate

Spatial extent:US or North AmericaParallel regional effortsTemporal extent:Most recent 20-30 yearsEvaluate trends

Straw-man Proposals for Short-term Goals

First Workshop, 4 December 2009, NOAA DSRC, Boulder, CO

Coordinated US Initiative on Emissions Research

Enhance access to and usefulness of emissions data

Data access and consistency• Data clearinghouse• Inventories for multiple years with

consistent methodology• Inventories for different sectors• Inventories for different regions• Input data (activities, EFs, land-use)• Observations data for evaluations

Data usefulness• Format transfer tools• File readers • Regridding and extraction tools• Analysis and statistical tools• Speciation tools• Visualization tools

Straw-man Proposals for Short-term Goals

First Workshop, 4 December 2009, NOAA DSRC, Boulder, CO

Coordinated US Initiative on Emissions Research

Evaluate inventories using multiple top-

down methods

Encourage exchange between evaluation and development

communities

Evaluate merged inventory of criteria pollutants and CO2

• Carry out merge for several key years

• Add other GHGs to merged inventory

• Temporal variations: annual, seasonal, day-of-week, diurnal

Evaluate speciation of US sources• VOCs and PM• Urban, industrial, agriculture, BB• Variability between individuals in

each source type• Temporal variability of source types

Evaluate consistency in emissions of aerosol and ozone precursors • Differences for different sources

Straw-man Proposals for Short-term Goals

First Workshop, 4 December 2009, NOAA DSRC, Boulder, CO

Coordinated US Initiative on Emissions Research

Investigate impacts of emissions on AQ

and climate

Impacts of emission changes• Emission changes: economic

activity, control strategies, land-use• Quantify impacts on AQ & climate

prediction• Do observations confirm predicted

AQ & climate changes?

Impacts of emission uncertainties• Evaluate uncertainties in emission

inventories at different scales• Quantify impacts on AQ & climate

prediction

Impacts of spatial variability of emissions• Source and speciation variations for

different regions• Observe and quantify impacts on

AQ & climate

Questions to Guide Discussions (from the Agenda)

First Workshop, 4 December 2009, NOAA DSRC, Boulder, CO

Coordinated US Initiative on Emissions Research

• What are short-term (6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years) goals with well-defined limits that could be achieved by this collaboration?

• What inventory products are needed/desired that are not available now, and what are the key characteristics needed to improve research and assessment activities? Dimensions of these questions include:• Focus on emissions only or also drivers?• Timescales?• Sectoral coverage?• Update frequency?• Is this a repository, an analysis effort, and/or a data production effort?• Target resolution?• Species: multi-pollutant approaches, air quality, greenhouse gases, toxics?

• What evaluation approaches show the most promise? How can we make better use of observational resources? What observations are most needed?

• What is the next step? • White paper?• Proposal?

• Are funding agencies willing to support this activity?• What can we do within our own agencies to promote this activity?

• Follow-up meeting focusing on specific issues?