Exploring spatiotemporal variation characteristics of China’s industrial carbon emissions on the basis of multi-source data

Spatiotemporal variations of industrial carbon emissions (IE) must be scientifically understood, which will be helpful to formulate reasonable emission reduction strategies. Given that spatial distribution of IE is irrelevant to space agents commonly used (such as population and nighttime light), estimation and spatialization methods for total carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are not entirely suitable for IE. Therefore, this paper used greenhouse gases observing satellite level 4A product to estimate IE at the city level and used industrial land density to obtain the distribution of IE within the administrative districts. Sectoral emission inventories of 182 cities and a mosaic Asian anthropogenic emission inventory named MIX were used to verify the results. Then, spatiotemporal variation characteristics of China’s IE were analyzed from multiple levels. Results showed that (1) the mean relative error of estimation results was 56.11%, among which 62 cities had relative error of less than 30%. Gridded IE in this paper had high consistency with MIX. (2) Cities with high IE experienced rapid growth from 2009 to 2012, followed by slower growth from 2012 to 2017. (3) Centroid of significant cold and hot spots moved to the southeast and northwest, respectively. Most cities with high annual IE growth had relatively low emission efficiency, mainly located in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. Aggregation of medium and high IE grids may represent high emission efficiency. Significant differences still exist between cities in IE, and sustainable development strategies should be formulated according to local conditions. Regions with high annual growth or low emission efficiency are the key to achieving IE reduction targets in future.