OSLO - A new study has used big data to calculate the greenhouse gas emissions from air travel for nearly every country in the world. The study found that the total emissions from aviation in 2019 were 911 million tons, 50% higher than the 604 million tons reported to the United Nations.
The research, by Norwegian University of Science and Technology, fills reporting gaps by including emissions from countries that were not required to report them, providing a clearer picture of aviation emissions per country. The study highlights the importance of big data in understanding and addressing climate emissions from aviation.
The study looked at nearly 40 million flights in 2019 and calculated the greenhouse gas emissions from air travel for essentially every country on the planet.
At 911 million tons, the total emissions from aviation are 50 per cent higher than the 604 million tons reported to the United Nations for that year.
For the first time ever, researchers have harnessed the power of big data to calculate the per-country greenhouse gas emissions from aviation for 197 countries covered by an international treaty on climate change.
When countries signed the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty, high-income countries were required to report their aviation-related emissions. But 151 middle and lower income countries, including China and India, were not required to report these emissions, although they could do so voluntarily.
This matters because the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change relies on country reports of emissions during negotiations on country-specific emissions cuts.
"Our work fills the reporting gaps, so that this can inform policy and hopefully improve future negotiations," says Jan Klenner, a PhD candidate at NTNU's Industrial Ecology Programme and the first author of the new article, which was recently published in Environmental Research Letters.
The new data show that countries such as China, for example, which did not report its 2019 aviation-related emissions, was second only to the United States when it came to total aviation-related emissions.
"Now we have a much clearer picture of aviation emissions per country, including previously unreported emissions, which tells you something about how we can go about reducing them," said Helene Muri, a research professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Industrial Ecology Programme. Muri was one of Klenner's supervisors and a co-author of the paper.
