A citizen walks at a riverside park in Yeouido in western Seoul on March 11, 2021, as South Korea issued a fine dust advisory. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, July 29 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s first integrated analysis system for the assessment of various factors that bring about an increase in the density of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere over the Korean Peninsula has been developed.
A research team from the Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Environmental Studies said Wednesday that it had developed a system that can quantitatively calculate the ratio of the factors contributing to the growth of CO2 density in the atmosphere.
The factors that contribute to increasing the CO2 density include changes in emissions resulting from economic growth, carbon emissions from forest through carbon absorption and soil respiration, carbon emissions caused by changes in land use, and atmospheric transport.
An analysis through this system showed that the growth in the CO2 density of the South Korean atmosphere was 4 percent higher than that of North Korea and 13 percent higher than the global average during the period from 2000 to 2016.
The researchers noted that the CO2 density of the Koreas increased faster than that of other regions since the former are situated in a location that is affected by air currents from China.
Unlike North, which is moving closer to a carbon neutral state thanks to an increase in its natural ecosystem’s CO2 absorption and reduction in artificial emissions, South Korea is moving in the opposite direction.
South Korea’s consumption of fossil fuels has increased as the country’s economic growth relied on the manufacturing industry, while North Korea’s energy consumption decreased primarily due to its coal exports.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
