CO2 Emission Inventory in Türkiye and Estimation of CO2 Concentration over Türkiye by Using Dispersion Modelling

The density and composition of the atmosphere strongly influence the temperature of the Earth. The release of greenhouse gases has changed the radiative balance of the atmosphere and trapped some of the outgoing energy. The most important greenhouse gas (GHG) is carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is increasing continuously and will keep growing. The rise in the concentration of CO2 is due to the combustion of fossil fuels for energy generation. It is estimated that CO2 concentration is responsible for about 60% of the greenhouse effect. The main scope of this study is to assess the results of CO2 inventories and dispersion modelling for the period 1990 – 2003 in province and district bases. The collected data from households, transportation, industry, and thermal power plants were used to estimate district base emissions for CO2. However, after the year 2004, the collected data is not permitted to estimate ground-level CO2 concentrations due to the confidentiality of many data. Therefore, the projection of the concentration study has been done only for the year 2004. However, the emission inventory has been projected until the year 2010. After this year, the province and district base projections contain lots of errors and uncertainties. The economic conditions, industrial development, increasing number of thermal power plants, and changing number of households create many errors and uncertainties besides the collected activity data. In addition, the data including households, industrial activities, and thermal power plants is confidential and requires many agreements by governmental organizations. For that reason, the study period is limited to 1990 and 2003. However, the selected period is very important for the base year evaluation. Türkiye has no base year in the presence of the Convention and Protocol. The inventory for the years between 1990 and 2003 is also very important in terms of evaluating industrial development in Turkey. During this time, there was a very critical improvement in the emission of CO2 depending on the Turkish economy. The fluctuation of CO2 emission has shown a great variety, and this study has considered the fluctuations under the economic conditions of Türkiye during this period. Following the emission inventory, the dispersion of CO2 was studied by using the USEPA’s Industrial Source Complex Long Term Model, Version 3 ISCLT3. Based on the results of modeling calculations, the ground-level CO2 concentration maps were prepared and superimposed on the geographical map of Türkiye by using Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques. GIS techniques were used to map all the information. The results of the CO2 emission inventory conducted in this study between 1990 and 2003 showed that the CO2 emission in 1990 was 142.45 million tones/year and it is noteworthy that the year 2000 saw the highest recorded emissions, amounting to 207.97 million tones/year. The territorial distributions of CO2 emission have shown that the Marmara Region emits the highest regional CO2 emission throughout the years with a mean value of 54.76 million tones/year. It was also concluded that the Aegean and Marmara Regions are responsible for half of the CO2 emission of Türkiye. The highest ground-level CO2 concentrations were always obtained in the Marmara Region. This condition will still be maintained in 2024.