Bayesian assessment of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) and halon banks suggest large reservoirs still present in old equipment

Lickley, Megan Jeramaz; Daniel, John S.; Fleming, Eric L.; Reimann, Stefan; Solomon, Susan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-11125-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 17

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-11125-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-11125-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 17

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

01 Sep 2022

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 01 Sep 2022

Bayesian assessment of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) and halon banks suggest large reservoirs still present in old equipment

Megan Jeramaz Lickley, John S. Daniel, Eric L. Fleming, Stefan Reimann, and Susan Solomon

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-11125-2022-supplement

Data sets

History of chemically and radiatively important atmospheric gases from the Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment (AGAGE) (https://agage.mit.edu/data/agage-data) R. G. Prinn, R. F. Weiss, J. Arduini, T. Arnold, H. L. DeWitt, P. J. Fraser, A. L. Ganesan, J. Gasore, C. M. Harth, O. Hermansen, J. Kim, P. B. Krummel, S. Li, Z. M. Loh, C. R. Lunder, M. Maione, A. J. Manning, B. R. Miller, B. Mitrevski, J. Mühle, S. O'Doherty, S. Park, S. Reimann, M. Rigby, T. Saito, P. K. Salameh, R. Schmidt, P. G. Simmonds, L. P. Steele, M. K. Vollmer, R. H. Wang, B. Yao, Y. Yokouchi, D. Young, and L. Zhou https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-10-985-2018

2001 database AFEAS https://agage.mit.edu/data/afeas-data

Model code and software

meglickley/HalocarbonBanks: HalocarbonBanks2022 (v1.0) M. Lickley https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7016835

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Executive editor

Banks of ozone-depleting halogenated carbon compounds continue to be sources of emissions. Their contribution to current and future emissions, however, is highly uncertain, and this uncertainty obscures ongoing emissions attribution and undermines international efforts to evaluate global compliance with the Montreal Protocol. The paper by Lickley et al. presents a convincing and thorough method to assess the banks of several halocarbons and their emissions based on known atmospheric lifetimes and constrained by observed atmospheric concentrations. The authors demonstrate that the banks of the halocarbons under assessment are very likely larger than previous international assessments suggest, and that total production has been very likely higher than reported. These are most important results that will find their way in the next WMO ozone assessment and have to be considered in assessments of global warming.