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Measuring the carbon emissions of megacities

Nature Climate Change volume 2, pages 560–562 (2012)Cite this article

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Carbon emissions from cities represent the single largest human contribution to climate change. Here we present a vision, strategy and roadmap for an international framework to assess directly the carbon emission trends of the world's megacities.

Urbanization has concentrated more than 50% of the global population, at least 70% of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions and a significant amount of anthropogenic methane into a small fraction of the Earth's land surface1. Carbon emissions from cities are projected to undergo rapid change over the next two decades with growth in developing countries and stabilization in developed countries. No current or planned system is capable of monitoring the atmospheric trends of carbon attributed to the world's largest cities despite recent field experiments demonstrating scientifically robust methods for assessing carbon emissions, and rapid improvements in measurement technology. A concerted effort is needed to transform emerging scientific methods and technologies into an operational monitoring system to support urban carbon management decisions.

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Figure 1: A strategy for monitoring megacity carbon emissions.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for discussions with many colleagues in the international carbon cycle science community, local officials, government agencies and non-governmental organizations. This work was done at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology under contract to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Riley M. Duren and Charles E. Miller are at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, California 91030, USA,

    Riley M. Duren & Charles E. Miller

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  1. Riley M. Duren
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  2. Charles E. Miller
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Correspondence to Riley M. Duren.

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Duren, R., Miller, C. Measuring the carbon emissions of megacities. Nature Clim Change 2, 560–562 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1629

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