TNO_CAMS high resolution European emission inventory 2000–2014 for anthropogenic CO₂ and future years following two different pathways

Abstract. The most important climate forcer over the period 1750–present is CO₂ from fossil fuel combustion (IPCC, 2013). European countries that are Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) submit national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories to the Climate Change secretariat. However, these reported emissions are annual totals and do not provide spatial or temporal patterns within the country. Recently the interest in high resolution CO₂ emission data is growing, both from the side of the research community as well as cities that want to make tailored climate action plans. Here we present a model-ready historic emission inventory at high spatial resolution (~7×7 km) for UNECE-Europe for 15 consecutive years (2000–2014) providing CO₂ from fossil fuels (CO₂_ff) and CO₂ from biofuels (CO₂_bf) to support carbon cycle modelling and sub-national scale identification of emissions. Where available and considered fit for purpose, we have used CO₂ estimates as reported by the Parties to UNFCCC. The data have been supplemented by other estimates, most notable from the IIASA GAINS model and the JRC EDGAR database to create a complete coverage. The growing importance of biofuel over the time 2000–2014 time period is clearly visible. This changes the isotopic signature of anthropogenic emissions which is important for quantifying fossil fuel emissions. The inventory is compatible with the TNO-MACC emission inventory for air pollutants (Kuenen et al., 2014) which can provide information on co-emitted species like CO and NO_x. The dataset is complemented by two projections based on the CIRCE project scenarios and using the latest historic year (2014) as the starting point for projection. The scenarios include a business-as-usual and a climate change scenario. The projections provide a range of possible future emissions that can be used for sensitivity tests, for example when designing a possible future observational system. The annual grid-maps are available for the historical years 2000–2014 at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.112889, and for the future years 2018–2050 at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1009519.