Science of the Total Environment 479480 (2014) 181188

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Science of the Total Environment

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An approach to a black carbon emission inventory for Mexico by

two methods
Xochitl Cruz-Nez
Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico, Centro de Ciencias de la Atmsfera, Circuito de la Investigacin Cientca s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, Mxico DF 04510, Mexico

H I G H L I G H T S
Black carbon emissions are estimated between 53 and 473 Gg/year on a fuel consumption method.
Black carbon emissions are estimated between 62 and 89 Gg/year on a sector method.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 19 October 2013
Received in revised form 17 January 2014
Accepted 17 January 2014
Available online 20 February 2014
Keywords:
Back carbon
Emission inventory
SLCF
Mexico

a b s t r a c t
A black carbon (BC) emission inventory for Mexico is presented. Estimate was performed by using two approaches, based on fuel consumption and emission factors in a top-down scheme, and the second from PM25
emission data and its correlation with black carbon by source category, assuming that black carbon = elemental
carbon.
Results show that black carbon emissions are in interval 53473 Gg using the fuel consumption approach
and between 62 and 89 using the sector method. Black carbon key sources come from biomass burning in
the rural sector, with 47 percent share to the National total. Mobile sources emissions account to 16% to
the total. An opportunity to reduce, in the short-term, carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) emissions by reducing black carbon emissions would be obtained in reducing emissions mainly from biomass burning in
rural housing sector and diesel emissions in the transport sector with important co-benets in direct radiative forcing, public health and air quality.
2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Black carbon (BC) is the main component in atmospheric aerosols
that absorbs solar radiation (Ramanathan and Carmichael, 2008) thus
reducing incident radiation at the surface. However, its net effect on
the surface-atmosphere system, known as radiative forcing, is an increase in temperature (Ramachandran and Kedia, 2010; Bahadur
et al., 2011). Radiative forcing of BC and ozone precursors are equivalent
to 40 to 70% of that produced by carbon dioxide (Wallack and
Ramanathan, 2009). Black carbon has a residence time in the atmosphere of approximately 4 to 7 days, depending on weather conditions
that allow or delay its deposition (Reddy and Boucher, 2007). However,
such a residence time is enough to be transported from region to region
and even from continent to continent (Bridgman et al., 1989). Methane,
ozone and BC have lifetimes shorter than that of CO2. Substances with
lifetimes shorter than 100 years are called short-lived climate forcers
(SLCF) (IPCC 2007).
Despite its important role as climate forcer, BC was not included in
the Kyoto Protocol (Bond, 2007; Wallack and Ramanathan, 2009) due
to several barriers including, i) a lack of scientic knowledge on physical
E-mail address: xcruz@unam.mx.
0048-9697/$ see front matter 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2014.01.064

and chemical processes in the atmosphere; ii) large uncertainty on its

radiative forcing effect; iii) local and regional effects rather the global
ones; and, iv) because it is addressed on local air pollution policies,
equivalency metrics is more difcult to obtain (Bond and Sun, 2005;
Rypdal et al. 2005; Bond, 2007). Recently, the declaration of the Group
of the Eight emphasized the commitment to take rapid action to address
short life agents, such as BC, without drawing away the action from long
life greenhouse gases (Group of the Eight 2009). The increasing concern
about health and welfare impact as well as the agricultural and climate
impacts of BC is growing fast (UNEP, 2011) and it is recognized the
contribution of BC to 10% or more to current climate change (Steiner,
2010).
Some BC emissions estimations have been done for Mexico from
global or regional data (Penner et al., 1993; Bond et al., 2004). For instance, Penner et al. (1993) estimated Mexico's black carbon emissions
from BC/S ratio, where S is sulfur concentration estimated from a similar
country. In this work we report the rst estimates using National data.
Is the purpose of this work to estimate a BC emission inventory for
Mexico by following two separate methodological approaches, a topdown method that uses fuel data and emission factors, and a bottomup method, that uses particulate matter in aerodynamic diameter of
2.5 m (PM2.5) emission inventory and a BC/PM2.5 relationship.

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X. Cruz-Nez / Science of the Total Environment 479480 (2014) 181188

Fig. 1. Diagramatic emission inventory process: On the left side. A bottom-up, or sector, procedure based on criteria pollutants 2005 National Inventory and, on the right side, a top-down
method based on the 2005 National Energy Balance and emission factors.

Table 1
Estimated emissions of black carbon by the method of emission factors and fuel consumption, 2005.
Source category

1 Energy industries
2 Manufacturing industries and construction
3 Transport
a Civil aviation
b On-road transportation
c Railways
d Navigation
4 Other sectors
a Commercial/institutional
b Residential
c Agriculture/forestry/shing
Total

Emissions (Gg BC)

Mitigation potential (Gg CO2 eq.)

Central

High

100-year

20-year

8.20
4.83
16.97
1.71
13.87
0.62
0.77
19.38
0.02
17.10
2.26
49.38

77.47
55.25
161.06
18.67
132.25
6.75
3.39
176.46
0.26
171.07
5.13
470.2

45,042
32,776
93,657
11,023
76,950
3984
1701
102,098
154
100,076
1868
275,818

138,591
100,848
288,176
33,916
236,768
12,258
5235
314,147
474
307927
5747
848,672

2. Data and method

2.3. Emission categories

2.1. Top-down method

Emission inventory format varies from region to region. Methodology in UNFCCC follows IPCC source classication; the EDGAR conversion
tables include also IPCC source classication. The USEPA dened its own
categories that are different from those of the UNFCCC. In Mexico the
emission inventory of greenhouse gases follows the format of the
UNFCCC while the emissions inventory criteria gases and particulate
matter has historically been presented in the format of its counterpart
in the United States of America. This presents a problem when standardizing emission categories and species, such as a GHG emission inventory
and criteria emission inventory, both sharing black carbon and some
indirect GHG, such as NO2.
Homogenization of emission categories is a national and regional
priority as GHG, criteria gases and suspended particles should be
handled and presented in the same format for comparison purposes,
completeness, transparency, reproducibility and to avoid gaps or duplication of information on counting of emissions.
In calculating emissions UNFCCC IPCC categories were used for the
top-down methodology and categories of the USEPA classication for
estimating bottom-up methodology were used.
BC carbon emissions are highly process dependent. Thus, an initial
uncertainty range by providing both lower and upper limits is estimated. For both methods (columns 2 and 3 in Tables 1 and 2), the uncertainty of such estimation, i.e., the difference between both estimations,
central and high, comes from the range between a) the emission factors
used in the rst approach, and b) the distribution of the emissions, in
the second approach. In the latter, the upper bond corresponds to
emissions from the few great polluters. This assessment of uncertainty
is included according to the analysis by Bond (2000).
An initial estimate of the mitigation potential in terms of carbon
dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) is also provided. It was obtained as the
difference between the higher and lower bonds multiplied by an average global warming potential (GWP) (IPCC 2007). The average GWP
values of 650 and 2000 were used for 100 and 20 years time horizons

Fuel use data from the 2005 National Energy Balance (Semarnat,
2008) and some detailed BC emission factors from Streets et al.
(2001) under the 1995 grouping, that is, emission factors containing
some sort of emission control systems, are used. An Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC)-like approach was made for those
sector sources were fuel combustion is involved in the IPCC Guidelines (IPCC-NGGIP 1997; IPCC 2006). IPCC Good Practice Guidance
(IPCC-NGGIP, 2000) was applied. The same activity data for combustion sources already reported in the Mexico's Fourth National
Communication to the United Nations Framework for Climate
Change Convention (UNFCCC) (Semarnat, 2008) is used.
2.2. Bottom-up method
For the bottom-up estimation we used the reported particulate matter in an aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to 2.5 m (PM2.5)
ratio to BC from combustion processes reported by Battye et al. (2002)1:
BCe PM2:5e  BC=PM2:5

Out of the 32 federal entities, the Federal District (SMA GDF, 2010),
and the State of Mexico (SMA EM, 2010) have published local BC emissions inventories following the PM2.5 ratio method. Estimates from
local entities will allow, in the near future, a detailed improvement in
the black carbon National Emission Inventory.
A diagram showing both methods is shown in Fig. 1.
1
Where BCe is Black carbon emissions; PM2.5e is the particulate matter in an aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to 2.5 micrometer emissions; BC/PM2.5 is the ratio of
Black carbon to PM2.5 in a given sector combustion, dimensionless.

X. Cruz-Nez / Science of the Total Environment 479480 (2014) 181188

Table 2
Estimated black carbon emissions by the method of emission factors, sectors not
involving fuel consumption, 2005.
Source category

Emissions (Gg BC)

5B Fugitive emissions from fuels: Oil and natural gas:

Venting and aring
6 Total agriculture: Field burning of agricultural residues:
Sugar cane
7 Total land-use change and forestry: Forest res
Total

0.92
0.02
2.35
3.29

(columns 4 and 5 in Tables 1 and 3) following Bond et al. (2004). The

20 year time horizon was included to emphasize the role of BC as a
short-life climate forcer (SLCF) as well as to show the importance of reducing, in the short term, important CO2 equivalent.
3. Results
BC emission estimates and the mitigation potentials according to the
top-down approach are shown in Tables 1 and 2 and calculations from
PM2.5 emissions are shown in Table 3. Top-down based estimates produce a range from 53 to 473 Gg of BC, whereas the bottom-up estimates
yield between 62 and 89 Gg BC. It is common in the practice of emission
inventories that the lower tier level yields the higher emission estimates; this could be one reason to explain the huge difference for the
upper bond between the two approaches. This is exclusive not only to
BC but also to any GHG, ozone precursor or criteria pollutant. Therefore,
as required by the IPCC-GPG (2000) key emission sources should be estimated using the highest tier available. Table 2 is a supplement to
Table 1 for no fuel consumption is used.
Table 2 presents results of sectors that do not involve fuel consumption. These were subjected to a different methodology from that of
Streets et al. (2001). In the estimation of emissions from gas aring in
oil extraction activities we used data from the National Hydrocarbon
Commission (CNH 2010) and an emission factor of 0.638 kg/Mg burned,
according to McEwen and Johnson (2012). Wildre emissions were
calculated with activity data based on the statistics of the Ministry of
Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food to 2005
and emission factors of Akagi et al. (2010).
The obtained results are similar to that in the inferior level. Nevertheless, the use of the sector method reduces the uncertainty by a factor of
almost two in the superior level respect to the method of fuel use. Results

183

Table 4
Estimates of black carbon emissions in Mexico.
Black carbon emissions estimate

Total emissions, Gg/year

Penner et al. (1993)

Lamarque et al. (2010)
This work, Top-down method
This work, Bottom-up method

1110
99
53473
6289

for BC compared to other estimates are shown in Table 4. It can be seen

that Lamarque's results are close to the estimates found in this work.
Black carbon emissions sharing in reduction schemes on a global
scale has been questioned in terms of (i) the effects of BC are uncertain,
(ii) they are unlike those of GHGs, and (iii) many impacts are unquantiable with the current metric of the top-of-atmosphere (TOA), globally
averaged forcing (Bond and Sun, 2005). However, reducing black carbon emissions has several co-benets. On the one hand, unlike carbon
dioxide and methane, main greenhouse gases, BC is a pollutant that
affects health and environmental visibility, contributing to snow and
ice melting, interacts with the clouds to decrease precipitation and, secondly, its reduction lowers the impact on climate change exponentially
in opposition to carbon dioxide and methane, with a slow long-term
decay (Bond and Sun, 2005; UNEP, 2011). Besides, BC emissions come
mainly from transition and developing countries activities, such as
biomass burning and poor diesel combustion in the transport sector.
3.1. Key sources
According to the bottom-up or sector method, the emission
categories were organized in order to obtain the most important emission sources in the amount of black carbon emitted up to 95% of total
emissions. Table 5 shows the results.
Results shown in Table 5 are interesting because they show the
predominance of rewood combustion in rural cook stoves as the
main source of black carbon emissions nationwide. By adding the contribution of mobile sources subcategories, a total of 15.8% is obtained.
A diversity of emission sources contribute as key sources, such as food
industry, power plants and wildres as well as some other area and
point sources emissions.
3.1.1. Woodfuel burning
Indoor burning wood for cooking and heating purposes is a common
practice in rural areas of Mexico with some 27 million people relying on

Table 3
Black carbon emissions from PM2.5/BC ratio to data from 2005.
Source category

Point sources
Transformation, manufacturing and construction industry
Power plants
Mobile sources
On-road
Non-road
Area sources
Industrial combustion
Commercial combustion
Agricultural combustion
Domestic combustion
Other industrial and commercial sources
Agriculture and livestock
Miscellaneous sources
Wildres
Agricultural burning
Total

Emissions (Gg/year)

Mitigation potential
(Gg/year CO2 eq.)

Central

High

100-year

20-year

15.72
11.97
3.74
9.86
3.77
6.09
36.83
0.67
0.01
b0.01
31.39
0.02
2.03
b0.01
2.15
0.47
62.4

29.91
23.34
6.57
19.53
7.06
12.47
39.67
1.22
0.03
b0.01
31.39
0.04
2.71
b0.01
3.58
0.49
89.1

9226
7386
1841
6284
2138
6284
1849
355
11
0
73
11
440
1
932
25
17,359

28390
22726
5664
19334
6579
19334
5690
1094
36
1
226
34
1353
2
2867
76
53,413

Note: PM25/BC relationships of Battye et al. (2002), except domestic woodfuel, with data from Akagi et al. (2010).

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X. Cruz-Nez / Science of the Total Environment 479480 (2014) 181188

this activity (Masera et al., 2005). This practice is related to health and environmental and climate change problems (Garca-Frapolli et al. 2010)
due to emission of pollutants and to an uncontrolled deforestation.
Table 5 shows that wood-burning stoves in rural areas are the most important emission source, contributing 47% of the national total. A problem
of quantifying harvest timber is that much of the logging is illegal. A national study (Caballero, 2010) estimated a total timber harvest of
42.98 million m3 in 2009. The legal or authorized volume was assessed
at 6.90 million m3 (16.05% of total). The informal logging by rural communities corresponded to 66% of the total (28.35 million m3), mostly
dedicated to domestic consumption, particularly rewood. In this estimate only ofcial data were used. Fig. 2a) shows Black carbon emissions
nationwide distribution by area sources. Main category in area sources is
biomass burning in rural households. The states with larger emissions are
Chiapas (7), Veracruz (30), Guanajuato (11) and Estado de Mexico (15).
The second higher category includes the states of Jalisco (14), Michoacn
16), Puebla (21) and Oaxaca (20). Some of them have high socioeconomic marginality. The states of Puebla, Guanajuato and Mexico
have highly industrialized and rural activities for sharing a widespread
use of diesel and wood fuel.
These observations are in agreement with Bond et al. (2004) who
pointed out that the most important BC sources are those related
to diesel combustion in developed countries, whereas, for less developed
economies, the most important sources are those related to domestic
biomass burning. Economies at an intermediate state will share both
proles. Fig. 2 summarizes such observations for Mexico. States in
Mexico that rank high in BC transport related emissions are the most industrialized states. Those that rank high in BC area sources related emissions are the poorer and less developed states. Some rank high in both
categories showing a mixed economic development degree.
3.1.2. Mobile sources
Mobile sources central emissions are split in subcategories in Table 6.
Fig. 2b) shows the nationwide distribution of BC emissions from
transport fuel combustion, including diesel, gasoline and other fuels,
both on- and off-road. In the published database it is not possible to
distinguish emissions by fuel. However, diesel combustion may be
considered the dominant process. The larger emissions occur in the
most industrialized states of the country: Federal District (9), State of
Mexico (15), Puebla (21), followed by Baja California (2), Nuevo Leon
(19) and Jalisco (14). The numbers between brackets correspond to
the labels in Fig. 2. These states also contain the larger metropolitan
areas of the country, which are their capital city. The State of Baja California contains the huge city of Tijuana and the capital Mexicali. Only
MCMA spans into two federal entities; The Federal District (9) and the

State of Mexico (15). Geographers and demographers acknowledge

the existence of a new big metropolitan area, joining the capital cities
of the states of Puebla (21) and Tlaxcala (29), Morelos (17), and Hidalgo
(13) (Delgado, 1998), but it has not been formally recognized and no
unied air quality program exists for this regional crown.
Mexico City government has estimated the city's black carbon emissions (SMA GDF, 2012). Data show that rst key sources are mobile
sources, with 1.5 Gg/year and a total estimate of 2.01 Gg/year. Compared to the national values recorded in this work, mobile sources BC
emissions from the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) accounts
to 15.2% to the mobile sources National total mobile sources and the
total MCMA emission inventory accounts to 3.2% to the National total.
This shows that mobile sources in MCMA contributed greatly to the national mobile sources emissions total and, in terms of the national total,
in whom the burning rewood in the rural sector occupies 47%, MCMA
emissions do not contribute signicantly.
Cargo vehicle eet is characterized by a large number of vehicles in
a one-man-one-truck scheme, in which a truck owner provides
freight services. Their vehicles are usually old and are subject to a poor
maintenance service. This type of service represents 82% of the number
of enterprises and 28% of the vehicles. Table 7 presents different categories of commercial vehicles by type of enterprise and number of vehicles
(ANPACT, 2012). Average age of such trucks is 14.9 years.
The Mexican government has recognized the value, mainly in terms
of health and air pollution, to modernize the vehicle eet. Currently,
among other programs, the Federal Government is running a scrapping
program with the main goal to modernize diesel heavy-duty eet. The
scrapping scheme is the provision of scal stimulus that is effective to
purchase a new or used vehicle up to six years old, which replaces a vehicle over 10 years old, that has formerly served the federal public service. Since its beginning in October, 2003 to December, 2010 up to
17,103 vehicles had been signed to scrapping scheme (Elizalde, 2011).
Fifty nine per cent of such vehicles are registered in the freight sector,
while 41% are passenger buses. And while the goal for 2012 was to reduce 1.1 million tons of CO2 per year by the application of this measure,
black carbon emissions would also be substantially reduced. However,
the main problem lies in the man-truck sector that is not registered or
aspires to renewing a vehicle unit, as he does not have access to credit.
Regarding diesel regulations, several institutional weaknesses have
avoided an advance in reducing particulate matter emissions in light
and heavy-duty vehicles. The Mexican government issued in 2006 an
Ofcial Standard that states that in September 2009 the diesel sold in
Mexico had only 15 parts of sulfur per million, and that gasoline
Magna, in October 2008, would not exceed 80 ppm sulfur. However,
by 2012 the Mexican oil company Pemex could not even distribute

Table 5
Black carbon emission key sources.
Emission Category

Emission Source

Percent share

Cumulative percent share

Area sources/Fuel combustion in Stationary Sources

Point sources
Mobile sources/Non-road
Point sources
Area sources
Area sources
Area sources
Area sources
Point sources
Point sources
Mobile sources/On road
Mobile sources/On road
Mobile sources/Non-road
Area sources/Fuel combustion in Stationary Sources
Mobile sources/On road
Mobile sources/On road
Area sources

Domestic combustionWoodfuel
Food and beverage industry
Agricultural machinery
Power plants
Miscellaneous sources
Wildres
Agriculture and livestock
Agricultural tillage
Iron and steel industry
Cement and lime industry
Urban transport bus
Private and commercial N 3 Ton
Marine shipping
Industrial combustionFuel oil
Trailer
Private car
Agricultural burning

0.47
0.11
0.07
0.06
0.04
0.03
0.03
0.03
0.03
0.02
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01
0.01

0.47
0.58
0.65
0.70
0.74
0.77
0.80
0.83
0.86
0.88
0.90
0.91
0.92
0.93
0.94
0.95
0.95

X. Cruz-Nez / Science of the Total Environment 479480 (2014) 181188

such product due to low oil rening infrastructure to produce low sulfur
fuels.
3.1.3. Food and beverage industry
Industrial sector in Mexico was motivated, in Zedillo's presidency
time, to improve its combustion technology by switching to cleaner
fuels such as natural gas. However, some obstacles to implementation,
such as the lack of a steady supply of these clean fuels (Ocampo,
2008), and the high sulfur content in industrial fuels contribute,
among others, to foster the levels of criteria pollutants, GHG and black
carbon, among others.
3.1.4. Wildres
In Mexico there are about 7650 wildres annually with 263,115 affected hectares (CNF, 2012). Wildres generate, besides black carbon
emissions, an impact on land degradation, deforestation, damage to
ecosystems and the proclivity to land use change, as well as toxic
emissions to the environment such as hydrogen cyanide, and organic
carbon, among others.

185

Black carbon emissions from wildres in 2012 are estimated in

7109 metric tons (Cruz-Nez et al., 2013). Assuming that a GWP can
be applied to black carbon, on a 20-year horizon value of 2500 (an average of values obtained by Bond and Sun, 2005; Berntsen et al., 2006;
Reddy and Boucher, 2007; Naik et al., 2007; Koch et al., 2007) these
black carbon emissions are equivalent to 17.8 Mton CO2-eq. If mitigation measures that were raised in the Special Climate Change Program
(CICC, 2009) had been performed in practice, an equal quantity of
CO2-eq could have been avoided in 2012.
4. Discussion
The use of a top-down method is advisable where no activity data or
emission factors are available. It is a rst approach in which uncertainty
is often important. On the other hand, data from the inventory of criteria
gas emissions and particulate matter provides a database that allows
better estimates of black carbon emissions.
Mexico has two commitments on emission inventory issues. One of
them deals to the UNFCCC to integrate their emissions inventory and

Fig. 2. National distribution of emissions by state from (a) Black carbon emissions from area sources where wood fuel use is the most relevant source, (b) Black carbon emissions from
mobile sources, assuming they are strongly inuenced by diesel combustion.

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X. Cruz-Nez / Science of the Total Environment 479480 (2014) 181188

Table 6
Mobile sources subcategories and black carbon emissions.
Mobile sources

BC Emissions, Mg/year

On road
Private car
Pick up
Private and commercial N 3 Ton
Private and commercial b 3 Ton (including SUV)
Urban transport bus
Trailer
Taxi
Private and commercial b 3 Ton (Microbuses)
Passenger public transport (Combis)
Motorcycles
Subtotal On-road
Non-road
Aviation
Basic equipment in airports
Marine shipping
Train engine
Light engine
Agricultural machinery
Construction machinery
Subtotal Non-road
Total Mobile sources

495.99
359.91
942.03
204.66
978.68
569.75
67.23
79.11
21.06
49.95
3768.37
103.6
25.37
601.57
442.9
41.71
4517.37
362.34
6094.86
9863.23

Table 7
Registered commercial vehicles according to type of owned enterprise (Table with data
from ANPACT, 2012).
Enterprise

Number of
units

Number of
enterprises

Number of
vehicles

One-man-one-truck
Small
Medium
Big

1 to 5
6 to 30
31 to 100
N100

94,020
17,810
2104
607

82.1
15.5
1.8
0.5

176,476
200,861
107,826
150,305

27.8
31.6
17
23.7

pollution will be evident (USEPA, 2012; UNEP, 2011). Anenberg et al.

(2012) evaluated co-benets of reducing black carbon that resulted in
an improvement in air quality, visibility, reduced hospital admissions
for acute and chronic respiratory problems that lead to substantial economic benets as assessed by and a substantial improvement in indoor
air quality.
National black carbon emissions inventories are relatively recent.
Penner et al., (1993), Bond et al. (2004) and others (JanssensMaenhout et al., 2012) have made estimates of global and regional
emissions from activity data and emission factors of particulate matter
PM2.5. Some countries that have displayed the importance of black carbon mitigation on climate change have initiated major efforts to account
for their emissions in order to identify key sources and therefore to be
able to design of mitigation measures. Table 9 presents some BC estimates in some countries compared with estimates of this work for key
sources.
In general, it appears that Mexico, India and China and the rest of
Asia have similar percentage components together, even when the totals are very different. The United States offers a different percentage
composition of other countries and Asia, being Mobile sources and Biomass burning BC major emitters. China, India and Mexico share a tradition of cooking in highly polluting stoves inside homes. Cookstoves
cause damage to the respiratory system of housing residents, mainly
women and households. Emissions from households in Mexico are similar in percentage of the total emissions of black carbon from India and
China. This is due to the large number of rural population cooking
with biomass fuel type.
The difference in both total emissions obtained by both methods and
intervals obtained emission is due to the method of using fuel has a
wide range of uncertainty in the emission factors used. From a sectoral
basis allows, on the other hand, signicantly increase condence and reduce uncertainty in emissions.
5. Conclusions

submit its National Communication and emission inventory. The latter,

the emission inventory of criteria gases and particulate matter, meets
the national need to have an inventory for planning purposes of
environmental policy, modeling of air quality, etc. The black carbon determination by both methods allowed, rst, to determine a range in the
national emissions of black carbon, and second, to develop and improve
the estimation uncertainty.
Black carbon has been recognized as a highly toxic family of pollutants (UNEP, 2011; USEPA, 2012). The Mexico City, through the
Air Quality Monitoring Network, records the concentration of different pollutants in the metropolitan area. Annual PM2.5 values
are presented and compared against for Mexican standards, the
World Health Organization and the Environmental Protection
Agency of the United States in Table 8.
Tabulated PM2.5 values are above international standards for
Mexico City, with a population of more than twenty million inhabitants.
Because most BC remains in the atmosphere for a short time as compared to gases, radiative impacts are concentrated around source regions (Naik et al., 2007; Bond et al., 2004). Furthermore, reducing
black carbon emissions is an action of benets because it allows reducing immediately the contribution to the increase of global temperature
(Myhre et al., 2014). Also, co-benets in terms of public health and air

The use of both top-down and bottom-up methodologies to develop

a single emission inventory is relatively a common procedure to approach an emission inventory. An emission inventory usually starts by
a top-down method from general variables, such as fuel consumption,
population, GDP, etc. As more detailed information is available and
sources are better dened, the bottom-up approach is to be applied.
National bottom-up and top-down emission inventories for black
carbon were estimated for Mexico. One was estimated using activity
data for combustion processes in the National Energy Balance, used to
build the National GHG emissions inventory. The latter was done by
using BC/PM2.5 ratios applied to PM2.5 emission estimates from the
2005 National Emission Inventory for criteria pollutants. Being BC emissions highly process dependent lower tier estimates are bound to higher
estimates and uncertainties. Main key sources found in this study are
wood fuel burning in rural cook stoves, with 47 percent emissions,
food industry, wildres, and mobile sources. Few key sources are responsible for most of the estimates, this could make possible to focus efforts to reduce uncertainties and to apply mitigation actions in a more
cost effective way.
By using two methods to estimate an emission inventory a baseline
is obtained. In this work it was noted that the bottom line of the emission interval obtained by each method is very similar and relates to

Table 8
PM2.5 concentration reported in 2011 in Mexico City and its metropolitan area compared to the Mexican Standard Norm, the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines and the
standard of the United States Bolded numbers highlight values above International Standards. (Reference: SMA GDF, 2012) (Values in g/m3).
Ofcial Mexican standard

Recommended value
Mexico City, 2011

World Health Organization

US Environmental Protection Agency

Percentile 98/24 h

Annual average

Percentile 99/24 h

Annual average

Triannual average of Percentile 98/24 h

Triannual average

65
54

15
24.8

25
54

10
24.8

35
59

15
25

X. Cruz-Nez / Science of the Total Environment 479480 (2014) 181188

187

Table 9
Black carbon emission comparison for several categories.

USA
China
India
Mexico (Bottom-up)
Mexico (Top-down)
Asia total (excluding exUSSR)

Mobile

Biomass burning

Residential

Other

Total (Gg/year)

Year of inventory

Reference

50.4
10.0
11.9
15.8
34.3
6

42.5
5.4
3.2
4.18
NE
18

4.4
52.7
57.3
50.4
34.6
64

2.7
31.9
27.6
29.6
31.1
30

432
1228
1029
89
473
2541

2005
2000
2005
2005
2005
2000

Chow et al., 2011

Qin and Xie, 2011
Sloss, 2012
This work
This work
Streets et al., 2003

Not included biomass burning from land use change.

the central emission estimation by both methods. The end of the curve
of emission measurements shows the worst case. In the top-down
method the difference in emissions between the central case and the
worst case is of one order of magnitude while the sectoral approach
such a difference is of one third.
Obtaining an emissions inventory of black (and subsequently organic) carbon should be based on the one hand in the reconciliation of the
source categories and pollutants and, on the other hand, in obtaining
Mexican emission factors to provide more realistic gures. Finally, it
should include biomass burning related to land use change activities.
Conict of interest
The research being reported in this publication was supported by the
National Autonomous University of Mexico. The author of this publication works as an academic staff in this institution. As stated in the manuscript, part of the work was done with funding from the National
Institute of Ecology.
Acknowledgment
To Bertha Mar Morales for the graphical support with a GIS.
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