Estimates of CO2 traffic emissions from mobile concentration measurements

We present data from a new mobile system intended to aid in the design of upcoming urban CO2‐monitoring networks. Our collected data include GPS probe data, video‐derived traffic density, and accurate CO2 concentration measurements. The method described here is economical, scalable, and self‐contained, allowing for potential future deployment in locations without existing traffic infrastructure or vehicle fleet information. Using a test data set collected on California Highway 24 over a 2 week period, we observe that on‐road CO2 concentrations are elevated by a factor of 2 in congestion compared to free‐flow conditions. This result is found to be consistent with a model including vehicle‐induced turbulence and standard engine physics. In contrast to surface concentrations, surface emissions are found to be relatively insensitive to congestion. We next use our model for CO2 concentration together with our data to independently derive vehicle emission rate parameters. Parameters scaling the leading four emission rate terms are found to be within 25% of those expected for a typical passenger car fleet, enabling us to derive instantaneous emission rates directly from our data that compare generally favorably to predictive models presented in the literature. The present results highlight the importance of high spatial and temporal resolution traffic data for interpreting on‐ and near‐road concentration measurements. Future work will focus on transport and the integration of mobile platforms into existing stationary network designs. Key Points High‐resolution traffic data are needed to interpret urban CO2 concentrations An inexpensive mobile system is used to collect simultaneous traffic and CO2 data Data from the prototype are modeled to provide emission estimates