Global climate forcing of aerosols embodied in international trade
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.Attached Files
Supplemental Material - ngeo2798-s1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 71966
- DOI
- 10.1038/NGEO2798
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20161111-153840554
- 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
- Created
-
2016-11-16Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-11Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Resnick Sustainability Institute