Fig. 4: Comparisons of the Pb records from remote sites with their adjacent regional gasoline Pb emission inventories.
From: Coral records indicate six-decade rise and fall of atmospheric lead emission in China
a The black dot shows Dongsha coral data from this study. Historical coal consumptions in China and India (million metric tonnes, Mmt, dashed lines), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions in China (kiloton, kt, red line) are also shown. Notably, the variations in national SO2 emissions in China exhibit a strong correlation with the Pb/Ca ratios in the Dongsha coral (r = 0.94, p < 0.001, n = 12, 2005–2016). b The white dot, square, and triangle denote coral records from the tropical Indian Ocean— Chagos24, Diego22, Salomon22, and Lakshadweep76, respectively. The grey dots represent Pb records from (c) Antarctic ice cores75, (d) Bermuda coral73, and (e) Greenland ice cores74. Greenland and Antarctic ice core records refer to the geometric mean of the atmospheric Pb flux reconstructed from a panel of ice cores in Southern Greenland (n = 13) and Antarctica (n = 16). Coral records are presented in terms of Pb/Ca. Emission inventory data for the USA and Europe are from Boyle et al.83, while data for other countries are from Lee et al.24 and Chen et al.77. Historical coal consumption data were obtained from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) website (https://www.eia.gov/international/data/world). SO2 emission of China were sourced from the Multi-resolution Emission Inventory model for Climate and air pollution research (MEIC) website (http://www.meicmodel.org).
