Emissions of ozone-depleting substances in Russia during 2001

There is a long-standing need for measurement-based estimates of the emissions of ozone-depleting substances (DDSs) in Russia. This need arises from >20 years of globally important ODS manufacture in Russia that reportedly ceased in December 2000, for which only aggregated, unaudited production figures are available. The integrity of these production figures is questionable because, for nearly the last decade, the global emissions of several important ODSs estimated from global production figures (production-based estimates) have been insufficient to account for their measured atmospheric burdens. Are these shortfalls in worldwide production-based estimates the result of Russian emissions that are inordinate relative to the reported production figures? We estimate Russian emissions of six ODSs (chlorofluorocarbon-11 (CFC-11, CCl₃F), CFC-12 (CCl₂F₂), CFC-113 (CCl₂FCClF₂), carbon tetrachloride (CCl₄), methyl chloroform (CH₃CCl₃), and halon-1211 (CBrClF₂)) from thousands of measurements of their mixing ratios along 8500 km of the Russian trans-Siberian railway in June-July 2001. Our measurement-based estimates indicate that Russian emissions in 2001, even if grossly underestimated because of underreported production, were insufficient in magnitude to play a major role in recent global emission shortfalls. The results also corroborate the reported termination of CFC production in Russia at the end of 2000. The large CFC-12 emissions observed in Russia suggest that a recent estimate of the global CFC-12 reserve is too small.