Daily CO2 emission for China's provinces in 2019 and 2020

Abstract. Tracking China's national and regional CO2 emission trends is becoming ever more crucial. The country recently pledged to achieve ambitious emissions reduction targets, however, high-resolution datasets for provincial level CO2 emissions in China are still lacking. This study provides daily CO2 emission datasets for China's 31 provinces, including for the first time, the province of Tibet. The inventory covers the emissions from three industrial sectors (power, industry and ground transport) during 2019 to 2020, with its temporal resolution at a daily level. In addition, the variations in CO2 emissions for seasonal, weekly and holiday periods have been uncovered at a provincial level for the first time. This new data was added to further analyze the impact that weekends and holidays have on China's CO2 emissions. Over weekend periods, carbon emissions are shown to reduce by around 3%. Spring Festival meanwhile, has the greatest impact on the reduction of China's CO2 emissions. This detailed and time-related inventory will facilitate a more local and adaptive management of China’s CO2 emissions during both the COVID-19 pandemic’s recovery and the ongoing energy transition. The data are archived at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4730175 (Cui et al., 2021).