Joint inference of CFC lifetimes and banks suggests previously unidentified emissions
Name
s41467-021-23229-2.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.57 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
ccd56ac17515675c47c97216a68a3d38
Author(s)
Lickley, Megan
Fletcher, Sarah
Rigby, Matt
Solomon, Susan
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Version
Final published version
Abstract
AbstractChlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are harmful ozone depleting substances and greenhouse gases. CFC production was phased-out under the Montreal Protocol, however recent studies suggest new and unexpected emissions of CFC-11. Quantifying CFC emissions requires accurate estimates of both atmospheric lifetimes and ongoing emissions from old equipment (i.e. ‘banks’). In a Bayesian framework we simultaneously infer lifetimes, banks and emissions of CFC-11, 12 and 113 using available constraints. We find lifetimes of all three gases are likely shorter than currently recommended values, suggesting that best estimates of inferred emissions are larger than recent evaluations. Our analysis indicates that bank emissions are decreasing faster than total emissions, and we estimate new, unexpected emissions during 2014-2016 were 23.2, 18.3, and 7.8 Gg/yr for CFC-11, 12 and 113, respectively. While recent studies have focused on unexpected CFC-11 emissions, our results call for further investigation of potential sources of emissions of CFC-12 and CFC-113, along with CFC-11.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23229-2
