Emissions from Fire in Sub-Saharan Africa:the Magnitude of Sources, Their Variability and Uncertainty

摘要

About half of the global gas and particle emissions to the atmosphere resulting from the burning of bio-mass originate from sub-Saharan Africa. There are four principal pathways: wildfires, the use of biomass fuels for energy, burning associated with deforestation, and the burning of agricultural residues. The total amount of biomass consumed by all four pathways is estimated from a review of many studies to be around 1400 Tg dry matter per year, with a 95% confidence interval of 1,200 to 1,600 Tg DM/y. Of this about 57% is consumed by wildfires, 36% for domestic and industrial energy, and around 3% each as in-field combustion associated with land use change and agricultural residue burning. While the overall emissions are relatively well-constrained (an uncertainty of around ±14%, about the same size as the interannual variability) by convergence between bottom-up and top down measures, the contribution from individual sources, and of individual pyrogenic trace gases, remains much less certain.