Sulfur dioxide emissions and county-level distributions in China

This paper presents the development of a county-level inventory system for sulfur dioxide emissions in China based on detailed and reliable investigations. Specific data for 269 and 381 large point sources are included in 1990 and 1995, respectively. The methodology for the extraction of provincial level area source emissions and the disaggregation from provincial total into county-level emissions is discussed in detail. The total sulfur dioxide emissions are 18.99 million tons in 1990 and 23.70 million tons in 1995. 23% and 28% of the national total emissions are identified as large point source emissions in 1990 and 1995, respectively. The geographic distributions of sulfur dioxide emissions at 2137 counties and county-level cities are also provided in this paper as a result of our studies.