The Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) compiles
anthropogenic emissions data for greenhouse gases (GHGs), and for multiple air
pollutants, based on international statistics and emission factors. EDGAR data
provide quantitative support for atmospheric modelling and for mitigation
scenario and impact assessment analyses as well as for policy evaluation. The
new version (v4.3.2) of the EDGAR emission inventory provides global
estimates, broken down to IPCC-relevant source-sector levels, from 1970 (the
year of the European Union's first Air Quality Directive) to 2012 (the end
year of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, KP). Strengths of
EDGAR v4.3.2 include global geo-coverage (226 countries), continuity in time,
and comprehensiveness in activities. Emissions of multiple chemical
compounds, GHGs as well as air pollutants, from relevant sources (fossil fuel
activities but also, for example, fermentation processes in agricultural
activities) are compiled following a bottom-up (BU), transparent and IPCC-compliant methodology. This paper describes
EDGAR v4.3.2 developments with respect to three major long-lived GHGs (CO2,
CH4, and N2O) derived from a wide range of human activities
apart from the land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector and
apart from savannah burning; a companion paper quantifies and discusses
emissions of air pollutants. Detailed information is included for each of the
IPCC-relevant source sectors, leading to global totals for 2010 (in the
middle of the first KP commitment period) (with a 95 % confidence
interval in parentheses): 33.6(±5.9) Pg CO2 yr−1, 0.34(±0.16) Pg CH4 yr−1, and 7.2(±3.7) Tg N2O yr−1. We provide uncertainty factors in emissions
data for the different GHGs and for three different groups of countries: OECD
countries of 1990, countries with economies in transition in 1990, and the
remaining countries in development (the UNFCCC non-Annex I parties). We
document trends for the major emitting countries together with the European
Union in more detail, demonstrating that effects of fuel markets and
financial instability have had greater impacts on GHG trends than effects of
income or population. These data (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2658138,
Janssens-Maenhout et al., 2019) are visualised with annual and monthly global emissions grid maps
of 0.1∘×0.1∘ for each source sector.