Decadal growth of black carbon emissions in India

A Geographical Information System (GIS) based methodology has been used to construct the black carbon (BC) emission inventory for the Indian geographical region. The distribution of emissions from a broader level to a spatial resolution of 1° × 1° grid has been carried out by considering micro level details and activity data of fossil fuels and bio‐fuels. Our calculated total BC emissions were 1343.78 Gg and 835.50 Gg for the base years 2001 and 1991 respectively with a decadal growth of around 61%, which is highly significant. The district level analysis shows a diverse spatial distribution with the top 10% emitting districts contributing nearly 50% of total BC emission. Coal contributes more than 50% of total BC emission. All the metropolitan cities show high BC emissions due to high population density giving rise to high vehicular emissions and more demand of energy.