Predictability of fossil fuel CO2 from air quality emissions

Abstract

Quantifying the coevolution of greenhouse gases and air quality pollutants can provide insight into underlying anthropogenic processes enabling predictions of their emission trajectories. Here, we classify the dynamics of historic emissions in terms of a modified Environmental Kuznets Curve (MEKC), which postulates the coevolution of fossil fuel CO2 (FFCO2) and NOx emissions as a function of macroeconomic development. The MEKC broadly captures the historic FFCO2-NOx dynamical regimes for countries including the US, China, and India as well as IPCC scenarios. Given these dynamics, we find the predictive skill of FFCO2 given NOx emissions constrained by satellite data is less than 2% error at one-year lags for many countries and less than 10% for 4-year lags. The proposed framework in conjunction with an increasing satellite constellation provides valuable guidance to near-term emission scenario development and evaluation at time-scales relevant to international assessments such as the Global Stocktake.