GREENHOUSE GASES WORLDWIDE: RELATIVE CHANGES, COMPARISONS, VARIATION CAUSES

ABSTRACT

Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gases and their concentrations are continuously increasing. Some scientists consider that water vapor is more an enhancer than a greenhouse gas by itself, even though its concentration in the atmosphere is much higher than those of the other 3 GHGs listed above. But it is not only the concentration of a GHG that counts, but also its percentage of absorption and reemission of infrared radiation, namely its global warming potential (GWP). Thus, methane has a GWP 20 times higher than CO2, while N2O is over 300 times stronger than carbon dioxide. The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research, known as EDGAR, provides extended data about the evolution of the concentration of GHGs per country integrally, per capita and per GDP (gross domestic product), by type of gas, by source of emission or sector (i.e. transport, other industrial combustion, buildings, non-combustion and power industry). We perform here a comparative analysis of the evolution of the 3 mainly man-made GHGs based on EDGAR for a relevant group of countries selected by combined criteria: economic power, geographical position (at least one country in each continent) and percentage of change of total GHG emissions from 1990 till 2012 and even 2016, depending on the available data. Not only averages and individual variations of GHG concentrations relative to the average are performed, but causes of shorter or longer term changes are identified for reasons related to the economic and even political changes of the states.

Keywords: greenhouse gases, EDGAR database, evolution, countries, anthropogenic emissions