PNNL

Historical estimates for aerosol and precursor compounds are key data needed for Earth system, climate, atmospheric chemistry, and transport models, as well as for economic and energy models. Historical data are used both for general analysis and for model validation through comparisons with observations. The core CEDS project is funded by the US Department of Earth and Environmental System Modeling (EESM) Program. Sub-regional detail and use of satellite datasets was funded by NASA’s Atmospheric Composition Modeling and Analysis Program (ACMAP).

Project Goals

The CEDS project has built a data-driven, open-source framework that produces global estimates for research and analysis. The data system produces estimates by country, sector, and fuel with the following characteristics:

• Annual estimates of surface fluxes (not including open burning) from 1750 to the latest full calendar year, updated every year (from 1970 for CH₄ and N₂O)
• Species: aerosol (BC, OC) and aerosol precursor and reactive compounds (SO₂, NO_x, NH₃, CH₄, CO, NMVOC) CO₂, and N₂O
• Spatially gridded data (0.5° and 0.1° for recent decades)
• Seasonal cycle (monthly) and speciated NMVOCs by sector
• State/province spatial detail for large countries – in progress

Major Features

• Data for recent years calibrated to robust country-level inventories where available (with adjustments where supported by independent research)
• Incorporates OMI/TropOMI SO₂ point source estimates to refine the magnitude and spatial location of this key species (and co-emitted species)
• Consistent driver data across all species
• Data provided in both aggregate (.csv) (by country, country/sector country/fuel, and country/sector/fuel) and gridded (.netCDF) formats.
• Gridded data released at 0.5° (all years) and 0.1° (from 1980 forward)

CEDS GitHub Site

The CEDS public GitHub repository contains the latest public release of R code, input files, documentation, issues tracking, and links to the latest data.

Project Status

• The April 2025 release (v2025_03_18) provides time series to 2023. Gridded emissions data for this release are available on ESGF, which are the historical “forcing data” for Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 7 (CMIP7) simulations.
• Historical gridded data from CEDS were also used in the (CMIP6) and are available through the Earth System Grid Federation. More details are available on CEDS CMIP6 page. Journal articles describing the data and methodology and the gridded data have been published in the CMIP6 special issue of Geoscientific Model Development, with the most up-to-date documentation available at the project gitHub site.
• An update focusing on recent decades out to 2017 was released by McDuffie et al. (2020).

Community Input

We welcome collaboration in improving the inventory data. Our collaboration policy is described on our GitHub repository home page.

CEDS e-mail list

To receive updates on project progress and notice of opportunities for participation you can sign up for an information distribution list. (This list will be used only for CEDS-related information and e-mail addresses will not be shared or distributed.) To subscribe to the listserv, please send an email with the email body: “subscribe cedsinfo”.

Issues at the gitHub repository

Known issues with the current CEDS data (both aggregate and gridded) are documented at the GitHub repository. If you find an issue with the current CEDS data, please post an issue using the “Issues” tab of the repository so that that information is publicly available and can be addressed.

Related Research

Also see this page for information on a related project, which aims to determine which aspects of aerosol and precursor emissions impact model results.

Journal Articles

Hoesly, R. M., Smith, S. J., Feng, L., Klimont, Z., Janssens-Maenhout, G., Pitkanen, T., Seibert, J. J., Vu, L., Andres, R. J., Bolt, R. M., Bond, T. C., Dawidowski, L., Kholod, N., Kurokawa, J.-I., Li, M., Liu, L., Lu, Z., Moura, M. C. P., O’Rourke, P. R., and Zhang, Q.:, Geosci. Model Dev., 11, 369-408, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-369-2018, 2018.

Hoesly R.M. and S.J. Smith. 2018. “Informing energy consumption uncertainty: an analysis of energy data revisions.” Environ. Res. Lett. 13 124023.https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaebc3

Feng, L., Smith, S. J., Braun, C., Crippa, M., Gidden, M. J., Hoesly, R., Klimont, Z., van Marle, M., van den Berg, M., and van der Werf, G. R.  Geosci. Model Dev., 13, 461–482, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-461-2020 .

Related Work

Smith, S. J., McDuffie, E. E., and Charles, M.: OpinionAtmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 13201–13218, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-13201-2022 .