Greenhouse gas emissions trends and drivers insights from the domestic aviation in Thailand.

Domestic aviation is a swiftly expanding contributor to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Presently, economic volatility and the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis have resulted in the decline of domestic aviation, but domestic aviation is rapidly recovering in many countries. However, from a GHG emissions viewpoint, the domestic aviation sector is largely unenforced even though the International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) provision for international aviation is currently in place. Accordingly, the knowledge base on emissions and their drivers from domestic aviation is weak, especially in developing countries, thus hindering an evidence-based policy debate. In this context, we have estimated and analyzed the pre-COVID-19 GHG emissions and their trends from commercial domestic aviation in Thailand; and provided insights on the role of key drivers that influence GHG emissions that are expected to be useful not only for Thailand but also for other developing countries. Emissions are estimated following Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier-II. Specifically, activity-based landing/take-off (LTO) cycle and cruise. This is compared to the Tier-I method, and key drivers were analyzed using an index decomposition method. The total annual average GHG emissions for all LTO cycles and cruises of commercial domestic aviation for 2015-2020 was 2254 Th. tonnes of CO2-eq. During the LTO cycle of the aircraft, GHG emissions were at an average of 983 Th. tonnes of CO2-eq. Additionally, during the cruise stage, emissions averaged 1270 Th. tonnes of CO2-eq. The choice of accounting methods (i.e., IPCC Tier II vs. Tier I) seems to have had only nominal implications. Our analysis showed that, in the 2008-2020 period, the aviation activity effect and economic growth were the key decisive factors in this sector's GHG emissions growth. It was followed by the fuel energy intensity levels and the population effect in descending order of impact. These findings have significant ramifications for present and future policies aimed at decreasing GHG emissions, aiding Thailand in achieving its climate targets by 2050, and enhancing energy efficiency as the domestic aviation market adapts.

Physical and non-physical factors driving urban heat island: Case of Bangkok Metropolitan Administration, Thailand.

This study is focused on two aspects of the urban heat island (UHI). Firstly, the study is aimed at examining the difference in temperature between zones that are classified into different built areas and other land cover types instead of using the urban and rural classification, which is prevalent in the existing literature. Secondly, we consider the heat-intensity-related physical structure of the city such as the sky view, building coverage, building height, surface albedo, and pervious and impervious surfaces, as well as non-physical factors such as anthropogenic heat, travel demand, electricity consumption, and air pollutant concentration. The local climate zone (LCZ) is used as an approach for characterizing the landscape and physical structure of the study areas. The Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) is used as the case study and 2016 as the base year for examination. The LCZ is classified using Landsat data and the training areas are created using Google Earth and Google Street View. The heat intensity is studied by deriving the land surface temperature (LST) from the thermal band of the Landsat satellite images of March 3, April 4, and April 12, in 2016, which represent the summer season in Bangkok. The result shows that the industry building areas have the highest mean LST is 32.41 °C, while the lowest LST is 28.32 °C in areas of water bodies; the temperature difference was approximately 4 °C. The factors significantly influencing the warming in the BMA are pervious and impervious surfaces, the building coverage ratio, and the anthropogenic heat flux, while the sky view factor, vehicular traffic, and air pollutant concentration are the weak drivers of UHI.

An assessment of potential synergies and trade-offs between climate mitigation and adaptation policies of Nepal.

Climate actions are centered on either mitigation or adaptation or both. Mitigation and adaptation actions can interact with each other resulting in synergies or tradeoffs. An integrated approach that considers these interactions is important to harness the synergies to create win-win situations and to avoid trade-offs for no-regret decisions. In this context, this study presents a qualitative analysis of the existing national level climate policies of Nepal to identify the extent and mechanism of their mitigation-adaptation interactions based on expert survey. Four key sectors having inter-relationships between mitigation and adaptation were identified as Agriculture, Forestry and Land use (AFOLU), urban planning, energy and water. We used Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) to rank and prioritize the opportunities and barriers for harnessing synergies and avoiding trade-offs of mitigation-adaptation interlinkage with these sectors in view. Our results show that such interactions in the Nepalese policy context are present mostly in the form of synergies in the order of AFOLU > Urban Planning > Energy > Water. We identified that developing an institution dedicated to climate change at the national level is the most important opportunity while inadequate institutional co-ordination is the most important barrier for harnessing these synergies.

A global dataset of CO2 emissions and ancillary data related to emissions for 343 cities.

We present a global dataset of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for 343 cities. The dataset builds upon data from CDP (187 cities, few in developing countries), the Bonn Center for Local Climate Action and Reporting (73 cities, mainly in developing countries), and data collected by Peking University (83 cities in China). The CDP data being self-reported by cities, we applied quality control procedures, documented the type of emissions and reporting method used, and made a correction to separate CO2 emissions from those of other greenhouse gases. Further, a set of ancillary data that have a direct or potentially indirect impact on CO2 emissions were collected from other datasets (e.g. socio-economic and traffic indices) or calculated (climate indices, urban area expansion), then combined with the emission data. We applied several quality controls and validation comparisons with independent datasets. The dataset presented here is not intended to be comprehensive or a representative sample of cities in general, as the choice of cities is based on self-reporting not a designed sampling procedure.

Source data supported high resolution carbon emissions inventory for urban areas of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region: Spatial patterns, decomposition and policy implications.

This paper developed internationally compatible methods for delineating boundaries of urban areas in China. By integrating emission source data with existing official statistics as well as using rescaling methodology of data mapping for 1 km grid, the authors constructed high resolution emission gridded data in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (Jing-Jin-Ji) region in China for 2012. Comparisons between urban and non-urban areas of carbon emissions from industry, agriculture, household and transport exhibited regional disparities as well as sectoral differences. Except for the Hebei province, per capita total direct carbon emissions from urban extents in Beijing and Tianjin were both lower than provincial averages, indicating the climate benefit of urbanization, comparable to results from developed countries. Urban extents in the Hebei province were mainly industrial centers while those in Beijing and Tianjin were more service oriented. Further decomposition analysis revealed population to be a common major driver for increased carbon emissions but climate implications of urban design, economic productivity of land use, and carbon intensity of GDP were both cluster- and sector-specific. This study disapproves the one-size-fits-all solution for carbon mitigation but calls for down-scaled analysis of carbon emissions and formulation of localized carbon reduction strategies in the Jing-Jin-Ji as well as other regions in China.

Planetary stewardship in an urbanizing world: beyond city limits.

Cities are rapidly increasing in importance as a major factor shaping the Earth system, and therefore, must take corresponding responsibility. With currently over half the world's population, cities are supported by resources originating from primarily rural regions often located around the world far distant from the urban loci of use. The sustainability of a city can no longer be considered in isolation from the sustainability of human and natural resources it uses from proximal or distant regions, or the combined resource use and impacts of cities globally. The world's multiple and complex environmental and social challenges require interconnected solutions and coordinated governance approaches to planetary stewardship. We suggest that a key component of planetary stewardship is a global system of cities that develop sustainable processes and policies in concert with its non-urban areas. The potential for cities to cooperate as a system and with rural connectivity could increase their capacity to effect change and foster stewardship at the planetary scale and also increase their resource security.