BVOC) Emission in China from 2001–2016: the Roles of Land Cover Change and Climate Variability
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Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 4825–4848, 2021 https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-4825-2021 © Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. A long-term estimation of biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emission in China from 2001–2016: the roles of land cover change and climate variability Hui Wang1,2, Qizhong Wu1, Alex B. Guenther2, Xiaochun Yang1, Lanning Wang1, Tang Xiao3, Jie Li3, Jinming Feng4, Qi Xu1, and Huaqiong Cheng1 1College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China 2Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA 3State Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Physics and Atmospheric Chemistry, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China 4Key Laboratory of Regional Climate-Environment for Temperate East Asia, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China Correspondence: Qizhong Wu ([email protected]) and Lanning Wang ([email protected]) Received: 12 January 2020 – Discussion started: 16 March 2020 Revised: 17 February 2021 – Accepted: 17 February 2021 – Published: 29 March 2021 Abstract. Satellite observations reveal that China has been amount in these regions from 2013–2016 is 11.0 %–17.2 % leading the global greening trend in the past 2 decades. We higher that from 2001–2004. We compared the long-term assessed the impact of land cover change as well as cli- HCHO vertical columns (VC) from the satellite-based Ozone mate variability on total biogenic volatile organic compound Monitoring Instrument (OMI) with the estimation of iso- (BVOC) emission in China from 2001–2016. We found the prene emission in summer. The results showed statistically greening trend in China is leading a national-scale increase significant positive correlation coefficients over the regions in BVOC emission. The BVOC emission level in 2016 could with high vegetation cover fractions. In addition, the isoprene be 11.7 % higher than that in 2001 because of higher tree emission and HCHO VC both showed statistically significant cover fraction and vegetation biomass. On the regional scale, increasing trends in the south of China where these two vari- the BVOC emission level from 2013–2016 could be 8.6 %– ables have high positive correlation coefficients. This result 19.3 % higher than that from 2001–2004 in hotspots includ- may support our estimation of the variability and trends of ing (1) northeastern China, (2) Beijing and its surround- BVOC emission in this region; however, the comparison still ing areas, (3) the Qin Mountains, (4) Yunnan Province, has large uncertainties since the chemical and physical pro- (5) Guangxi–Guangdong provinces, and (6) Hainan island cesses, including transportation, diffusion and chemical reac- because of the land cover change without considering the tions, were not considered. Our results suggest that the con- impact of climate variability. The comparison among differ- tinued increase in BVOC will enhance the importance of con- ent scenarios showed that vegetation changes resulting from sidering BVOC when making policies for controlling ozone land cover management are the main driver of BVOC emis- pollution in China along with ongoing efforts to increase the sion change in China. Climate variability contributed signif- forest cover fraction. icantly to interannual variations but not much to the chang- ing trend during the study period. In the standard scenario, which considers both land cover change and climate vari- ability, a statistically significant increasing trend can still be found in regions including Beijing and its surroundings, Yun- nan Province, and Hainan island, and BVOC emission total Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 4826 H. Wang et al.: A long-term estimation of BVOC in China 1 Introduction ous land cover products Version 6 by the Moderate Resolu- tion Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors as well as Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) play an im- the Model of Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature portant role in air quality and the climate system due to (MEGAN; Guenther et al. 2012) to investigate BVOC emis- their large emission amount and reactivity (Guenther et al., sion in China from 2001 to 2016. By annually updating the 1995, 2006). BVOCs are important precursors of ozone and vegetation information of MODIS observations, we could ac- secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) (Kavouras et al., 1998; curately estimate interannual variability of BVOC emission Claeys et al., 2004); therefore, it is important to understand to assess the impact of greening trend on BVOC in China the variability of BVOC emission and its impact on air qual- from 2001–2016. ity and the climate system. The emission of BVOC is con- A long-term in situ observation of BVOC is not available trolled by multiple environmental factors like temperature, in China currently to investigate interannual variability of radiation, CO2 concentration and other stresses. Therefore it BVOC emission; however, satellite formaldehyde (HCHO) is affected by climate changes (Guenther et al., 1995; Arneth observations provide an opportunity to validate the interan- et al., 2007; Penuelas and Staudt, 2010). Besides the climatic nual variability of isoprene, the dominant compound among factors, land cover change also plays a key role in the vari- BVOC species that accounts for almost half of total BVOC ability of BVOC emission (Stavrakou et al., 2014; Unger, emission in China (Li et al., 2013). Since HCHO is an impor- 2013; Chen et al., 2018). For instance, the global cropland tant proxy of isoprene in forest regions with no significant expansion has been estimated to dominate the reduction of anthropogenic impact, satellite HCHO columns are widely isoprene, the dominant BVOC species, in the last century used to derive isoprene emission at regional to global scales (Lathière et al., 2010; Unger, 2013), although there are large (Palmer et al., 2003; Marais et al., 2012; Stavrakou et al., uncertainties associated with these estimates. 2009, 2015; Kaiser et al., 2018). Zhu et al. (2017b) reported China has been greening in recent decades (Piao et al., an increasing trend of HCHO vertical columns (VC) detected 2015). A recent study points out that China accounts for by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) driven by in- 25 % of the net increase in global leaf area from 2000–2017 creasing cover rate of local forest in the northwestern United (Chen et al., 2019). The increase in forest area plays a dom- States. Stavrakou et al. (2018) also used the long-term HCHO inant role in greening in China, with multiple programs to VC to investigate the annual variability of BVOC induced by maintain and expand forests (Zhang et al., 2016; Bryan et climate variability. Here we used the long-term OMI 2005– al., 2018; Chen et al., 2019). The enhancement of vegetation 2016 record to evaluate the interannual isoprene variability cover rate and biomass can lead to the increase in BVOC we estimated in China. emission and induce changes in local air quality and the cli- mate system. Previous studies have investigated the long- term emission trend of dominant BVOC species like isoprene 2 Data and method in China (Fu and Liao, 2012; Li and Xie, 2014; Stavrakou 2.1 MEGAN et al., 2014; Chen et al., 2019). Li and Xie (2014) estimated the historical BVOC emissions from 1981–2003 in China us- MEGAN (Guenther et al., 2006, 2012) is the most widely ing the national forest inventory records and reported that used model for calculating BVOC emission from regional to −1 the BVOC emission increased at a rate of 1.27 % yr . An- global scales (Müller et al., 2008; Li et al., 2013; Sindelarova other estimation by Stavrakou et al. (2014) showed an up- et al., 2014; Chen et al., 2018; Bauwens et al., 2018; Messina −1 ward trend of 0.42 % yr of isoprene emission in China et al., 2016). The offline version of MEGAN v2.1 (Guenther from 1979–2005 driven by the increasing temperature and et al., 2012), available at https://bai.ess.uci.edu/megan (last solar radiation; moreover, the upward trend of isoprene emis- access: 25 March 2021), was used to estimate the BVOC −1 sion reached 0.7 % yr when considering the replacement of emission in China from 2001 to 2016. MEGAN v2.1 calcu- cropland with forest. A recent study by Chen et al. (2018) lates emissions for 19 major compound categories and uses concluded that the global isoprene emission decreased by the fundamental algorithm 1.5 % because of the tree cover change from 2000–2015, but in China, the isoprene emitted by broadleaf trees and non- Fi D "iγi; (1) trees increased by 3.6 % and 5.4 %, respectively. However, where F , " and γ represent the emission amount, the stan- these studies have limitations in representing annual changes i i i dard emissions factor and emission activity factor of chem- of vegetation; e.g., Li and Xie (2014) used fixed leaf area in- ical species i. The standard emission factor in this study is dex (LAI) input of the year 2003 over the whole study period based on the plant functional type (PFT) distribution from of 1981–2003. the Community Land Model 4.0 (Lawrence et al., 2011). The Considering the significant land cover change and green- emission activity factor γ accounts for the impact of multi- ing trend in China, it is necessary to thoroughly investigate i ple environmental factors and can be written as the impact of intense reforestation on BVOC emission in China. In this study, we used the latest annually continu- γi D CCELAIγp;iγT ;iγA;iγSM;iγC;i; (2) Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 4825–4848, 2021 https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-4825-2021 H. Wang et al.: A long-term estimation of BVOC in China 4827 where γp;i, γT ;i;γA;i;γSM;i and γC;i represent the activity climatic zones using the definition in Bonan et al.