"Here we present a unique long-term (decadal) record of CO2 mole fractions from five sites across Utah’s metropolitan Salt Lake Valley. Four state-of-the-art global-scale emission inventories also have a nonlinear relationship with population density across the city; however, in contrast to our observations, they all have nearly constant emissions over time. Our results indicate that decadal scale changes in urban CO2 emissions are detectable through monitoring networks and constitute a valuable approach to evaluate emission inventories and studies of urban carbon cycles."

Key findings

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"Divergent CO2 emission trends were detected despite similar levels of population growth and thus, changes in urban fossil fuel CO2 emissions likely did not scale linearly with population changes."

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"Trends in the northern, industrial part of the SLV declined coincident with a reduction in power production by a nearby electric utility power plant, representing a possible explanation for the decline and highlighting the importance of large urban point sources."

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"The divergent trends contribute to a nonlinear relationship between population density and CO2 emissions."

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