A highly resolved temporal and spatial air pollutant emission inventory for the Pearl River Delta region, China and its uncertainty assessment

A highly resolved temporal and spatial Pearl River Delta (PRD) regional emission inventory for the year 2006 was developed with the use of best available domestic emission factors and activity data. The inventory covers major emission sources in the region and a bottom–up approach was adopted to compile the inventory for those sources where possible. The results show that the estimates for SO2, NOx, CO, PM10, PM2.5 and VOC emissions in the PRD region for the year 2006 are 711.4 kt, 891.9 kt, 3840.6 kt, 418.4 kt, 204.6 kt, and 1180.1 kt, respectively. About 91.4% of SO2 emissions were from power plant and industrial sources, and 87.2% of NOx emissions were from power plant and mobile sources. The industrial, mobile and power plant sources are major contributors to PM10 and PM2.5 emissions, accounting for 97.7% of the total PM10 and 97.2% of PM2.5 emissions, respectively. Mobile, biogenic and VOC product-related sources are responsible for 90.5% of the total VOC emissions. The emissions are spatially allocated onto grid cells with a resolution of 3 km × 3 km, showing that anthropogenic air pollutant emissions are mainly distributed over PRD central-southern city cluster areas. The preliminary temporal profiles were established for the power plant, industrial and on-road mobile sources. There is relatively low uncertainty in SO2 emission estimates with a range of −16% to +21% from power plant sources, medium to high uncertainty for the NOx emissions, and high uncertainties in the VOC, PM2.5, PM10 and CO emissions.