CaltechAUTHORS
Published September 2016 | Version Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Global climate forcing of aerosols embodied in international trade

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Peking University
  • 2. ROR icon Tsinghua University
  • 3. ROR icon University of California, Irvine
  • 4. ROR icon McGill University
  • 5. ROR icon Princeton University
  • 6. ROR icon Argonne National Laboratory
  • 7. ROR icon State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control
  • 8. ROR icon University of East Anglia

Abstract

International trade separates regions consuming goods and services from regions where goods and related aerosol pollution are produced. Yet the role of trade in aerosol climate forcing attributed to different regions has never been quantified. Here, we contrast the direct radiative forcing of aerosols related to regions' consumption of goods and services against the forcing due to emissions produced in each region. Aerosols assessed include black carbon, primary organic aerosol, and secondary inorganic aerosols, including sulfate, nitrate and ammonium. We find that global aerosol radiative forcing due to emissions produced in East Asia is much stronger than the forcing related to goods and services ultimately consumed in that region because of its large net export of emissions-intensive goods. The opposite is true for net importers such as Western Europe and North America: global radiative forcing related to consumption is much greater than the forcing due to emissions produced in these regions. Overall, trade is associated with a shift of radiative forcing from net importing to net exporting regions. Compared to greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, the short atmospheric lifetimes of aerosols cause large localized differences between consumption- and production-related radiative forcing. International efforts to reduce emissions in the exporting countries will help alleviate trade-related climate and health impacts of aerosols while lowering global emissions.

Additional Information

© 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. Received 22 May 2016; Accepted 22 July 2016; Published online 05 September 2016. This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC; 41422502 and 41222036), the 973 program (2014CB441303 and 2014CB441301), and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF; 10010002399). Z.Lu and D.S. acknowledge the support of the Modeling, Analysis and Predictability (MAP) programme of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Proposal No. 08-MAP-0143. Z.Liu acknowledges the support of NSFC (41501605). D.G. acknowledges the support of NSFC (41328008), the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFA0602604), the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ES/L016028/1), and the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/N00714X/1). Author Contributions: J.L., Q.Z. and Y.Huang conceived the research. D.T., D.P., H.Z., T.F., Z.L., D.S. and Q.Z. calculated the emissions. R.N., Y.Y. and J.L. conducted chemical transport model simulations. X.T., R.N., Y.Huang and J.L. conducted radiative transfer model simulations. J.L., S.D., Y.Huang and R.N. led the analysis and writing. All authors contributed to the writing. These authors contributed equally to this work :Jintai Lin & Dan Tong. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplemental Material - ngeo2798-s1.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
71966
DOI
10.1038/NGEO2798
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20161111-153840554

Related works

Describes
10.1038/NGEO2798 (DOI)

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China
41422502
National Natural Science Foundation of China
41222036
National Natural Science Foundation of China
2014CB441303
National Natural Science Foundation of China
2014CB441301
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
10010002399
NASA
08-MAP-0143
National Natural Science Foundation of China
41501605
National Natural Science Foundation of China
41328008
National Natural Science Foundation of China
2016YFA0602604
Economic and Social Research Council
ES/L016028/1
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
NE/N00714X/1

Dates

Created
2016-11-16
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-11
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

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