2015 SMOKE-Ready Canadian Air Pollutant Emission Inventory (APEI) Package version 1

Sassi, M.:  
Air Quality Policy-Issue Response Section, Meteorological Service of Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada
2121, route Transcanadienne, Dorval, Quebec, H9P 1J3, Canada
Email: Mourad.Sassi@canada.ca

Zhang, J. and Moran, M.D.:
Air Quality Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada
4905 Dufferin Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3H 5T4, Canada
Email: Junhua.zhang@canada.ca

This 2015 Canadian emissions package was prepared by Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) for use in North American air quality (AQ) modelling.  It consists of two major components.  The first component is a SMOKE-ready version of the 2015 Canadian criteria-air-contaminants (CAC) national emissions inventory, also referred to as the Canadian Air Pollutant Emission Inventory (APEI).  The original database version of the 2015 APEI was compiled by the ECCC Pollutant Inventories and Reporting Division (PIRD) (ECCC, 2016).  The database version was then modified by the ECCC Air Quality Policy-Issue Response Section (REQA) for processing with the Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE) emissions processing system (https://www.cmascenter.org/smoke/).  The second major component of this package consists of a set of Geographic Information System (GIS) shapefiles.  These shapefiles are used to prepare 71 gridded spatial surrogate fields that are needed to allocate sector-specific inventory emissions reported at the provincial and sub-provincial level to any AQ model grid that is specified.  This package also includes all SMOKE ancillary files needed to generate spatial surrogates and to process the inventory files, a delivery document that describes the contents of this emissions package in more detail (Sassi et al., 2018), and English and French language versions of a PIRD report that describes the preparation of the 2015 APEI (ECCC, 2016).

The 2015 Canadian CAC inventory includes emissions of seven pollutants: CO, NH₃, NO_x, PM_2.5, PM₁₀, SO₂ and VOC.  It is composed of 21 inventory files belonging to three major source types: point sources (14 files); area sources (2 files); and all transportation sources (6 files, where the aircraft landings and takeoffs (LTO) emissions file is also in the point-source file list).  A bottom-up approach based on facility-level and large smokestack emissions reported to the Canadian National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) (ECCC, 2017) was used to compile point-source emissions from larger facilities, whereas a top-down approach based on source-specific activity data and emission factors was used to compile emissions for other types of point sources (upstream oil and gas sources (UOG), LTO, agricultural sources, and wildfires) as well as area sources, and (mobile) transportation sources.  More details are given in ECCC (2016) and Sassi et al. (2018).

This package consists of seven files:

1. File 1 contains the 44 GIS shapefiles used to generated gridded spatial surrogate fields for the SMOKE spatial allocation step.
2. File 2 lists the contents of file 1.
3. Files 3 (in French) and 4 (in English) describe the generation of the 2015 APEI emissions database. 
4. File 5 describes the contents and structure of this package.
5. File 6 contains the inventory files and SMOKE ancillary files.
6. File 7 lists the contents of file 6. 

See the “Related Data Sets And Materials” section below for more details.

Note that this emissions inventory package was first made available to external agencies upon request in December 2018.  It has been used by REQA for a number of policy-related modelling studies, including a review of the Canadian Ambient Air Quality Standard for PM_2.5, several analyses of health impacts of air pollutants for Health Canada, a study of the impact of marine emissions on Canadian air quality, and a study of the Canadian air quality impacts of the COVID-19 national lockdown in spring 2020 (Mashayekhi et al., 2021).  In addition, a modified version of the contents of this inventory package was provided on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s air emissions modelling website as part of the U.S. EPA 2016 v1.0 policy platform (see https://www.epa.gov/air-emissions-modeling/2016v1-platform).

REFERENCES

ECCC, 2017.  2016 National Pollutant Release Inventory Summary Report. Environment and Climate Change Canada, Gatineau, Quebec, Cat. No. En81-14E-PDF, ISSN: 2369-7733, 67 pp., http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/eccc/En81-14-2016-eng.pdf (last access: 24 May 2021).

ECCC, 2016.  Canada’s Air Pollutant Emissions Inventory Report: 1990-2015.  Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), Gatineau, Quebec, Cat. No. En81-26E-PDF, ISSN 2369-940X, 97 pp., http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/eccc/En81-26-2015-eng.pdf (last access: 24 May 2021).

Mashayekhi, R., R. Pavlovic, J. Racine, M.D. Moran, P.M. Manseau, A. Duhamel, A. Katal, J. Miville, D. Niemi, S.J. Peng, M. Sassi, D. Griffin, and C. McLinden, 2021.  Isolating the impact of COVID-19 lockdown measures on urban air quality in Canada.  Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-021-01039-1.

Sassi, M., J. Zhang, and M.D. Moran, 2018.  Documentation for SMOKE-Ready 2015 Air Pollutant Emission Inventory (APEI) Package version 1.  Report No. AQSC-18-031, December, Meteorological Service of Canada, Montreal, 16 pp.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are very grateful to the Pollutant Inventory and Reporting Division of Environment and Climate Change Canada for making available the “raw” database version of the 2015 Canadian APEI along with specialized inventory and ancillary files related to certain emissions sectors.  These files served as the starting point for preparing the 2015 SMOKE-ready emissions inventory.  Rabab Mashayekhi from REQA helped to prepare the two archive files (files 2 and 4) and Qiong Zheng from AQRD helped to generate and assemble the GIS shapefiles in file 4.

RELATED DATA SETS AND MATERIALS

1. “2015CA_Inv_Package_surrogates_18Dec2018.tar.gz” – Spatial allocation package to accompany 2015 SMOKE-ready Canadian APEI, 1.6 Gb.
2. “2015CA_Inv_Package_surrogates_18Dec2018_contents.txt” – Listing of contents of this archive, 33 Kb.
3. “2017APEIR-French-2017-02-10v0.1.docx” – Rapport d’inventaire des émissions de polluants atmosphériques du Canada: 1990-2015.  French-language version of report prepared by PIRD to describe the preparation of the 2015 APEI, 4.0 Mb.
4. “2017APEIR2016-12-21_v3.1.docx” – Canada’s Air Pollutant Emissions Inventory Report: 1990-2015.  English-language version of report prepared by PIRD to describe the preparation of the 2015 APEI, 3.6 Mb.
5. “A18031_2015_Canadian_CAC_EmissionsInventoryPackage_version1_JZ.pdf” – Sassi, M., J. Zhang, and M.D. Moran, 2018.  Documentation for SMOKE-Ready 2015 Air Pollutant Emission Inventory (APEI) Package version. Report No. AQSC-18-031, December, Meteorological Service of Canada, Montreal, 16 pp., 392Kb.
6. “Canada_2015_inventory_v1_svn70_18Dec2018.tar.gz” – Version 1 of 2015 SMOKE-ready Canadian Air Pollutant Emissions Inventory (APEI), 375 Mb.
7. “Canada_2015_inventory_v1_svn70_18Dec2018_contents.txt” – Listing of contents of this archive, 7 Kb.