We are indebted to the site operators who oversee the day-to-day running of the AGAGE, NIES and NOAA stations. We particularly thank the NASA Upper Atmosphere Research Program for its continuing support of AGAGE, including providing modelling, field station and instrumentation support though grant NNX16AC98G to MIT, and supporting the overall experimental programme through grants NNX16AC96G and NNX16AC97G to SIO. Observations at Cape Grim are supported largely by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, the Australian Department of the Environment and Energy (DoEE) and Refrigerant Reclaim Australia (RRA). Mace Head, Ireland, is supported by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS, UK, formerly the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC)) contract 1028/06/2015 to the University of Bristol and the UK Meteorological Office. Ragged Point, Barbados is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, USA), contract RA-133-R15-CN-0008 to the University of Bristol. M.R., L.M.W., M.F.L. and R.L.T. were supported by Natural Environment Research Council grants NE/I021365/1, NE/I027282/1, NE/M014851/1, NE/L013088/1 and NE/N016548/1. A.L.G. is supported by NERC Independent Research Fellowship NE/L010992/1. S.P., T.L., S.L., M.-K.P. and K.-R.K. were supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (no. NRF-2016R1A2B2010663). Observations at Hateruma were partly supported by the Ministry of the Environment of Japan. S.A.M., B.D.H. and G.S.D. are indebted to C. Siso, D. Mondeel, J. D. Nance, F. Moore, J.W. Elkins, B. Vasel, C. Schultz, R. Schnell and J. H. Butler for discussions and assistance with the NOAA measurements considered here, which were made possible in part with support from the NOAA Climate Program Office’s AC4 program.
Nature thanks Andreas Stohl, Guus Velders and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
xmexme on May 23rd, 2019 at 00:18 UTC »
TL;DR in the words of the paper’s authors: “We show that emissions from eastern mainland China are 7.0 ± 3.0 (±1 standard deviation) gigagrams per year higher in 2014–2017 than in 2008–2012, and that the increase in emissions arises primarily around the northeastern provinces of Shandong and Hebei. This increase accounts for a substantial fraction (at least 40 to 60 per cent) of the global rise in CFC-11 emissions... Several considerations suggest that the increase in CFC-11 emissions from eastern mainland China is likely to be the result of new production and use, which is inconsistent with the Montreal Protocol agreement to phase out global chlorofluorocarbon production by 2010.”
Untinted on May 22nd, 2019 at 22:15 UTC »
Aha! Ok, they're non-compliant with the Montreal Protocol.. Does the Montreal Protocol say anything about what happens to those who sign and violate the agreement?
CFC-11 on May 22nd, 2019 at 18:53 UTC »
So about a year ago, it was reported that emissions of significant quantities of CFC-11 had been observed, above and beyond the trend in emissions of CFC-11 from old appliances and such. A time-series of measurements of global CFC-11 concentrations showed a change in the first and second derivative, indicating a new emissions source. The source of this emissions increase became a large global whodunnit. Chinese industry was the primary suspect, though some scientists suggested that these CFCs might come from recycling activities of old refrigerator units, from volcanic processes, from biomass burning, or from a laundry-list of other sources.
Now, researchers have shown that the emissions are coming from an area of China where industrial foam-blowing is prevalent, as was suspected, but not proven.
The production of CFC-11 has been banned by the Montreal Protocol, a binding international agreement between 197 nation-state signatories ratified in 1987, because of the adverse effect CFC-11 has on the ozone layer. Total phaseout of CFC-11 production was pledged to occur in China by 2010.
In this case, noncompliance with the Montreal Protocol means that it will take longer than previously predicted for the seasonal Antarctic ozone hole to heal up (currently predicted to stop occurring in the springtime sometime between 2050 - 2070 or so - depending on emissions trends of ozone depleting substances and greenhouse gases). Continued non-compliance will produce adverse outcomes in human health and agriculture due to increased surface ultraviolet radiation from thinning mid-latitude stratospheric ozone columns.
It's a big deal, and hopefully there will be consequences for Montreal Protocol signatories who tolerate noncompliance.