Uncertainties in global, regional and national emission inventories

An overview is provided of the uncertainty aspects related to global emission inventories of anthropogenic sources, both at grid level (e.g. 1degreesx1degrees) as well global total source strength used for the construction of global budgets, for a specific year and for trends. The EDGAR 3.2 inventories of greenhouse gases comprise an update of the 1990 emissions of EDGAR version 2.0, more recent emission data for 1995 as well as a trend back in time to 1970. The difference between different versions of an inventory, e.g. EDGAR emissions for 1990, provides an indication of the quality of the most recent statistics available in time as well as the variability during some years as well as of the uncertainty in the methods and emission factors applied. Within the process of constructing both global totals from national estimates and vice versa, often (des)aggregations are made of uncorrelated or of (partly) correlated sources, which have to be taken into account properly.