Climate Forcing from the Transport Sectors

Although the transport sector is responsible for a large and growing share of global emissions affecting climate, its overall contribution has not been quantified. We provide a comprehensive analysis of radiative forcing from the road transport, shipping, aviation, and rail subsectors, using both pa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2008-01, Vol.105 (2), p.454-458
Main Authors: Fuglestvedt, Jan, Berntsen, Terje, Myhre, Gunnar, Rypdal, Kristin, Skeie, Ragnhild Bieltvedt
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerosols
Air Pollutants - analysis
Air Pollution - economics
Air Pollution - legislation & jurisprudence
Air Pollution - prevention & control
Air transportation
Atmosphere
Atmospheric aerosols
Aviation
Carbon Dioxide - analysis
Carbon Dioxide - chemistry
Carbon Dioxide - economics
Carbon dioxide emissions
Climate
Climate change
Conservation of Energy Resources - economics
Conservation of Energy Resources - legislation & jurisprudence
Conservation of Energy Resources - methods
Emissions
Environmental transport
Greenhouse Effect
Greenhouse gases
Kyoto Protocol
Methane
Models, Theoretical
Ozone - chemistry
Paleobotany
Physical Sciences
Pollutant emissions
Reference Values
Roads
Shipping
Transportation
Vehicle Emissions - analysis
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Summary:Although the transport sector is responsible for a large and growing share of global emissions affecting climate, its overall contribution has not been quantified. We provide a comprehensive analysis of radiative forcing from the road transport, shipping, aviation, and rail subsectors, using both past- and forward-looking perspectives. We find that, since preindustrial times, transport has contributed ≈15% and 31% of the total man-made CO₂ and O₃ forcing, respectively. A forward-looking perspective shows that the current emissions from transport are responsible for ≈16% of the integrated net forcing over 100 years from all current man-made emissions. The dominating contributor to positive forcing (warming) is CO₂, followed by tropospheric O₃. By subsector, road transport is the largest contributor to warming. The transport sector also exerts cooling through reduced methane lifetime and atmospheric aerosol effects. Shipping causes net cooling, except on future time scales of several centuries. Much of the forcing from transport comes from emissions not covered by the Kyoto Protocol.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0702958104