A new global gridded data set of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion: Methodology and evaluation

Abstract

We describe a system for constraining the spatial distribution of fossil fuel emissions of CO2. The system is based on a modified Kaya identity which expresses emissions as a product of areal population density, per capita economic activity, energy intensity of the economy, and carbon intensity of energy. We apply the methodology of data assimilation to constrain such a model with various observations, notably, the statistics of national emissions and data on the distribution of nightlights and population. We hence produce a global, annual emission field at 0.25° resolution. Our distribution of emissions is smoother than that of the population downscaling traditionally used to describe emiss..