Short-lived climate forcing agents (SLCFAs) such as black carbon and ozone offer important policy opportunities to reduce radiative forcing in the short term (this decade), while also reducing air pollution impacts. Because of the combination of high absorption, a regional distribution roughly aligned with solar irradiance, and the capacity to form widespread atmospheric brown clouds in a mixture ...

Crop residue burning is becoming increasingly common in Nepal’s Terai region as a quick and cheap way to clear fields after cereal harvests. This practice contributes heavily to atmospheric pollution in the Indo-Gangetic Plain, contributing to regional haze and winter fog, affecting air quality in cities, and triggering adverse environmental impacts such as rising temperatures and changing rainfal...

The open burning of agricultural crop residue is a key environmental issue facing the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, the Indo-Gangetic plain in particular. There is a varying intensity in the incidence of open agricultural burning in this region, and multiple drivers that determine why farmers in this region decide to burn their crop residues. While there have been research studies conducted for othe...

The Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use1 (AFOLU) sector encompasses managed ecosystems and offers significant mitigation opportunities while delivering food, wood and other renewable resources as well as biodiversity conservation, provided the sector adapts to climate change. Land-based mitigation measures represent some of the most important options currently available. They can both deliver...

Burned area estimates are an essential component of cropland management systems, inventory-based fire emission calculations, and air quality models, and any inaccuracies in these estimates propagate into the final outputs and decision-making process. While satellite-based global burned area and fire emission datasets (e.g., GFED, FireCCI51, and MCD64A1) are frequently cited in the scientific liter...

With a population of close to 400 million people, the West African region has one of the fastest growing vehicle fleets in the world. As in most African countries, the bulk of vehicle imports into the region consists mainly of used vehicles. Regulation to restrict the quality of cars being imported into the region is weak. This, coupled with poor fuel quality, is one of the leading cause of increa...

The Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles (PCFV), one of the leading global public-private partnership promoting cleaner fuels and vehicles, has been working with developing and transitional countries to reduce vehicular air pollution through the promotion of cleaner fuels and vehicles. The PCFV focuses to promote the introduction of low sulphur fuels of 50 ppm & below for both diesel and p...

This policy update summarizes the steps taken by Chile in relation to its new energy efficiency law and its targets for zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), and it analyzes the implications of these two policies for the decarbonization of fleets regionally and internationally.In recent years, Chile has created several public policies for clean transportation. Chile’s leadership is notable both in Latin ...

Back in September 2016, there was much excitement when the Government of India announced a leapfrog to Bharat Stage (BS) VI emission standards. At the same time, it was clear that it would take much hard work to realize the goal and meet the ambitious April 1, 2020 deadline. India is the first to leapfrog from Euro IV-equivalent emission standards directly to Euro VI-equivalent standards, and ther...

Authors evaluated personal exposure of 62 individuals to the air pollutant Black Carbon, using 13 portable aethalometers while keeping detailed records of their time-activity pattern and whereabouts. Concentrations encountered in transport are studied in depth and related to trip motives. The evaluation comprises more than 1500 trips with different transport modes. Measurements were spread over tw...