Publication Date:
2016-03-18
Description:
Knowledge of the contribution that individual countries have made to global radiative forcing is important to the implementation of the agreement on "common but differentiated responsibilities" reached by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Over the past three decades, China has experienced rapid economic development, accompanied by increased emission of greenhouse gases, ozone precursors and aerosols, but the magnitude of the associated radiative forcing has remained unclear. Here we use a global coupled biogeochemistry-climate model and a chemistry and transport model to quantify China's present-day contribution to global radiative forcing due to well-mixed greenhouse gases, short-lived atmospheric climate forcers and land-use-induced regional surface albedo changes. We find that China contributes 10% +/- 4% of the current global radiative forcing. China's relative contribution to the positive (warming) component of global radiative forcing, mainly induced by well-mixed greenhouse gases and black carbon aerosols, is 12% +/- 2%. Its relative contribution to the negative (cooling) component is 15% +/- 6%, dominated by the effect of sulfate and nitrate aerosols. China's strongest contributions are 0.16 +/- 0.02 watts per square metre for CO2 from fossil fuel burning, 0.13 +/- 0.05 watts per square metre for CH4, -0.11 +/- 0.05 watts per square metre for sulfate aerosols, and 0.09 +/- 0.06 watts per square metre for black carbon aerosols. China's eventual goal of improving air quality will result in changes in radiative forcing in the coming years: a reduction of sulfur dioxide emissions would drive a faster future warming, unless offset by larger reductions of radiative forcing from well-mixed greenhouse gases and black carbon.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Li, Bengang -- Gasser, Thomas -- Ciais, Philippe -- Piao, Shilong -- Tao, Shu -- Balkanski, Yves -- Hauglustaine, Didier -- Boisier, Juan-Pablo -- Chen, Zhuo -- Huang, Mengtian -- Li, Laurent Zhaoxin -- Li, Yue -- Liu, Hongyan -- Liu, Junfeng -- Peng, Shushi -- Shen, Zehao -- Sun, Zhenzhong -- Wang, Rong -- Wang, Tao -- Yin, Guodong -- Yin, Yi -- Zeng, Hui -- Zeng, Zhenzhong -- Zhou, Feng -- England -- Nature. 2016 Mar 17;531(7594):357-61. doi: 10.1038/nature17165.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China. ; Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing, 210023, China. ; Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France. ; Centre International de Recherche en Environnement et Developpement, CNRS-PontsParisTech-EHESS-AgroParisTech-CIRAD, 94736 Nogent-sur-Marne, France. ; Key Laboratory of Alpine Ecology and Biodiversity, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Center for Excellence in Tibetan Earth Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China. ; Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique, CNRS, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6, 75252 Paris, France.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26983540" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Aerosols/analysis/chemistry
;
Air Pollution/*analysis
;
Atmosphere/*chemistry
;
Carbon Dioxide/analysis
;
China
;
Fossil Fuels
;
*Greenhouse Effect
;
Methane/analysis
;
Soot/analysis
;
Sulfates/analysis
;
Sulfur Dioxide/analysis
;
Uncertainty
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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