Creating a Global Grid of Distributed Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions from Nighttime Satellite Imagery

The potential use of satellite observed nighttime lights for estimating carbondioxide (CO2) emissions has been demonstrated in several previous studies. However, the procedures for a moderate resolution (1 km 2 grid cells) global map of fossil fuel CO2 emissions based on nighttime lights are still in the developmental phase. We report on the development of a method for mapping distributed (excluding electric power utilities) fossil fuel CO2 emissions at 30 arc-seconds or approximately 1 km 2 resolution using nighttime lights data collected by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program‟s Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS). A regression model, Model 1, was initially developed based on carbon emissions from five sectors of the Vulcan data produced by the Purdue University and a nighttime satellite image of the U.S. The coefficient derived through Model 1 was applied to the global nighttime image but it resulted in underestimation of CO2 emissions for most of the world‟s countries, and the states of the U.S. Thus, a second model, Model 2 was developed by allocating the distributed CO2 emissions (excluding emissions from utilities) using a combination of DMSP-OLS nighttime image and population count data from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) LandScan grid. The CO2 emissions were distributed in OPEN ACCESS