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Abstract
Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) are amongst the most potent greenhouse gases listed under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). With atmospheric lifetimes in the order of thousands to tens of thousands of years, PFC emissions represent a permanent alteration to the global atmosphere on human timescales. While the industries responsible for the vast majority of these emissions – aluminium smelting and semi-conductor manufacturing – have made efficiency improvements and introduced abatement measures, the global mean mole fractions of three PFCs, namely tetrafluoromethane (CF4, PFC-14), hexafluoroethane (C2F6, PFC-116) and octafluoropropane (C3F8, PFC-218), continue to grow. In this study, we update baseline growth rates using in-situ high-frequency measurements from the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE) and, using data from four European stations, estimate PFC emissions for northwest Europe. The global growth rate of CF4 decreased from 1.3 ppt yr−1 in 1979 to 0.6 ppt yr−1 around 2010 followed by a renewed steady increase to 0.9 ppt yr−1 in 2018. For C2F6, the growth rate grew to a maximum of 0.125 ppt yr−1 around 1999, followed by a decline to a minimum of 0.075 ppt yr−1 in 2009, followed by weak growth thereafter. The C3F8 growth rate was around 0.007 ppt yr−1 until the early 1990s and then quickly grew to a maximum of 0.03 ppt yr−1 in 2003/04. Following a period of decline until 2012 to 0.015 ppt yr−1, the growth rate slowly increased again to ~0.017 ppt yr−1 in 2019. We used an inverse modelling framework to infer PFC emissions for northwest Europe. No statistically significant trend in regional emissions was observed for any of the PFCs assessed. For CF4, European emissions in early years were linked predominantly to the aluminium industry. However, we link large emissions in recent years to a chemical manufacturer in northwest Italy. Emissions of C2F6 are linked to a range of sources, including a semi-conductor manufacturer in Ireland and a cluster of smelters in Germany’s Ruhr valley. In contrast, northwest European emissions of C3F8 are dominated by a single source in northwest England, raising the possibility of using emissions from this site for a tracer release experiment.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2149–2164 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 12 Feb 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Financial support. The operations of Mace Head and Tacolneston were funded by the UK Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) through contract no. 1537/06/2018 to the University of Bristol. The operations of Mace Head and Ragged Point were also partly funded under NASA contract no. NNX16AC98G to MIT with a sub-award (no. 5710002970) to the University of Bristol. Ragged Point was also partly funded by NOAA grant no. RA133R15CN0008 to the University of Bristol. Support for the observations at Jungfraujoch comes through Swiss national programmes HALCLIM and CLIMGAS-CH (Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, FOEN), the International Foundation High Altitude Research Stations Jungfraujoch and Gornergrat (HFSJG) and ICOS-CH (Integrated Carbon Observation System Research Infrastructure). Observations at Cape Grim are supported largely by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO and NASA contract NNX16AC98G to MIT with sub-award no. 5710004055 to CSIRO. Operations at the O. Vittori station (Monte Cimone) are supported by the National Research Council of Italy. Trinidad Head, Cape Matatula and data processing and calibration across the AGAGE network were funded by NASA grant nos. NNX16AC96G and NNX16AC97G to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Luke M. Western and Matthew Rigby were funded by NERC grant nos. NE/N016548/1 and NE/S004211/1, and Matthew Rigby was funded under NERC grant no. NE/M014851/1. Inverse analysis was carried out on hardware supported by NERC grant no. NE/L013088/1.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Author(s).