Evaluation of Global Warming Potential for Greenhouse Gases by Experimental Method

At present, the international community pays more attention on global warming issue caused by the increased emissions of greenhouse gases. In this study, we establish a set of simulated atmospheric experimental devices to investigate the reactions of greenhouse gases with OH radicals or other atmospheric oxidants and evaluate their atmospheric chemistry implications, e.g., global warming potential (GWP). To estimate the accuracy of the experimental devices, the reaction rate constant of 1,1-difluoroethane (R152a) with OH radicals is measured using the relative rate method, and the infrared spectrum is obtained. The ks of R152a with OH radicals are found to be (3.3 ± 0.1) × 10–14 cm3 /(molecule?s) at 298 K and (2.27 ± 0.04) × 10–14 cm3 /(molecule?s) at 272 K. The atmospheric lifetime and radiative efficiency (RE) are then estimated as 1.4 years and 0.099 W/(m2?ppb), respectively. The GWPs (time horizons of 20, 50, and 100 years) are estimated at 474, 129, and 37, respectively. Our GWP values are in good agreement with those from IPCC-AR5 (discrepancy is less than 7%), which indicates the high reliability of our experimental apparatus.