Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net 1680-7367 1680-7375 8 2 2008 10.5194/acpd-8-7373-2008 http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/8/7373/2008/ http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/8/7373/2008/acpd-8-7373-2008.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/8/7373/2008/acpd-8-7373-2008.pdf 7373 7389 2008-04-16 The travel-related carbon dioxide emissions of atmospheric researchers A. Stohl ast@nilu.no Norwegian Institute for Air Research, Kjeller, Norway Most atmospheric scientists agree that greenhouse gas emissions have already caused significant changes to the global climate system and that these changes will accelerate in the near future. At the same time, atmospheric scientists who – like other scientists – rely on international collaboration and information exchange travel a lot and, thereby, cause substantial emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂). In this paper, the CO₂ emissions of the employees working at an atmospheric research institute (the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, NILU) caused by all types of business travel (conference visits, workshops, field campaigns, instrument maintainance, etc.) were calculated for the years 2005–2007. It is estimated that more than 90% of the emissions were caused by air travel, 3% by ground travel and 5% by hotel usage. The travel-related annual emissions were between 1.9 and 2.4 t CO₂ per employee or between 3.9 and 5.5 t CO₂ per scientist. For comparison, the total annual per capita CO₂ emissions are 4.5 t worldwide, 1.2 t for India, 3.8 t for China, 5.9 t for Sweden and 19.1 t for Norway. The travel-related CO₂ emissions of a NILU scientist, occurring in 24 days of a year on average, exceed the global average annual per capita emission. Norway's per-capita CO₂ emissions are among the highest in the world, mostly because of the emissions from the oil industry. 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