Analyzing Factors that are

Responsible for the

Increasing Trend of
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
and their Relationship with
the Trend

Lixin (Jenny) Deng.

Directed by Rongrong Qu.
FP Mathematics C4.
I would like to share some shocking finding regarding the amount of greenhouse
gas emissions worldwide between 1990 and 2015. Bill Gates said in his new book
on economic growth and the environment: “The climate is like a bathtub that’s
slowly filling up with water. Even if we slow the flow of water to a trickle, the tub
will eventually fill up and water will come spilling out onto the floor. That’s the
disaster we must prevent. Setting a goal to only reduce our emissions—but not
eliminate them—won’t do it.” So, I decided to conduct research on the Factors that
Generate an Increasing Trend for Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Basically, I am
trying to discover a trend of the number of emissions as time proceeds.

To accomplish this task, I will perform the following steps:

1. collect data from research facilities conducting research on this topic.

2. Rearrange the data into convenient table for processing and analysis
3. Create a scatter plot showing the gases separately, generate the regression
lines and the equations using Excel.
4. Analyze the graph.
5. Calculate the total amounts for each year and arrange them into a table.
6. Analyze and explain the table.
7. Make a scatter plot on the trend of the total amount of greenhouse gas
emissions worldwide from 1990 to 2015, along with the regression line and
the important values.
8. Analyze the graph and the information included in the graph.
9. Create box plots focusing on the impact of the factor-the types of gas and
analyze the box plots through observation.
10.Calculate the standard deviation and analyze.
11.Find graphs to confirm the observations made above and to ensure the
contrast between carbon dioxide emissions and other gases.
12.Conclude my analysis.
13.Evaluate the validity of the conclusion and calculation.
14.Reflect on the problems with the project design and think about methods to
improve them.

I organized some raw data on the topic I obtained from the internet into the table
below.
Table 1: Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Gas, 1990-2015
Source: The World Resources Institute’s CAIT database:
www.climatewatchdata.org/ghg-emissions

The table shown above are raw data collected on the amount of greenhouse gas
emission worldwide from 1990 to 2015.

In order to compare the increase in the total amount of greenhouse gas emission
and the increase in the amount for separate different types of gas. I organized the
data into a scatter plot as following:

Diagram 1: scatter plots for Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Gas, 1990-2015.
From the contents of diagram 1, we clearly see that the increasing trend is
significantly stronger for carbon dioxide. We can abstract from the regression line
and their equations that all scatter plots in diagram 1 have an upward sloping trend,
indicating rising greenhouse gas emissions in these 25 years. Taking a close look at
the graph and the equations, we can capture that, carbon dioxide doesn’t only have
a high starting point, it also has a ridiculously large slope, a five-year increase in
time will lead to approximately a 518 million metric tons of carbon dioxide
equivalents increase in emissions of carbon dioxide, but for the three other types of
gas, their gradients of the regression line are all around or under 50. Which
indicates that if we want to cut emissions, the concentration should be more on
carbon dioxide.

I processed the raw data to get the total amount of emissions for each year and
reorganized them into a table.

Example of progress of finding the total:

∑ amount of emissions=22849.92+7072.53+2421.26+ 302.21=32645.92
Table 2: Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Gas and in total, 1990-2015

The total amount of greenhouse gas emissions increased from 32645.92 in 1990 to
46760.47 in 2015. We can see that there is a significant increase in the total
amount between 2000 and 2005, from 35607.72 million metric tons of carbon
dioxide equivalents to 40300.02 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents.

I represented the information below as scatter plots in Diagram 2, along with its r 2,
r and the regression line
Diagram 2: Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions in total, 1990-2015.

R=0.9797

From diagram 2,
We can clearly see an upward sloping trend. From the graph, we can abstract that
the formula of the line of best fit is approximately y=619.6 x −1E+06. Theoretically,
the slope of the regression line means that a five-year increase in time will result in
a 619.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents increase in the total of
greenhouse gas emissions. We can see that the value of r is approximately 0.9797,
because 0.7< r ≤ 1∧r > 0, so there is a strong positive linear relationship between the
time and the amount of greenhouse gas emissions, indicating an increasing trend as
time proceeds. We can see that the coefficient of correlation (r 2) is about 0.9598,
which means that about 96% of the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions can
be explained by time.

Taking a closer look at the regression line and the specific values, the increases
from 2000 to 2005, and from 2005 to 2010 are both about twice the size of the
increase from 1995 to 2000 and the increase from1990 to 1995, which means that
the amount of growth is constantly increasing throughout the 25 years.

From the tables and diagrams above and the observations made accordingly, we
can abstract that the data for carbon dioxide is very particular, the minimum and
the speed it increases are both much larger than that of any other gas. But the
scatter plot cannot give us the full picture regarding the spread of the emission for
a certain gas throughout the years and differences in minimum, maximum and
median, so I made box-and-whiskers plots that can display all these traits
mentioned above. The graph is generated using Excel.

Diagram 3: the spread of greenhouse gas emissions every five years between 1990
and 2015
We use Inter-quartile range as a measure of spread and a method to observe
important values in a data set, like the median, the minimum, the maximum, the
inter-quartile range etc.
From Diagram 3, we can see the spread of the data largely varies for different
types of gas. From observing the interquartile range, we can observe that carbon
dioxide emissions have a significantly higher spread compared with other gases,
the variability is very large for carbon dioxide. The spread for carbon dioxide
emissions is almost ten times as much as the spread for methane, it’s even higher
compared with nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases. This indicates that carbon
dioxide contributes much to the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and it takes
up a huge part of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

Inter-quartile may use more information and show many important values, but it
still ignores most of the data and causes data lost. So, I used another more accurate
way to measure the spread of data for different types of gas-calculating the
standard deviation using Excel.

Example of progress of finding the standard deviation:

μ=(22849.92+23890.22+25637.87+29663.75+33328.38+34521.91)÷ 6 ≈ 28315
 σ=
√ ∑ (22849.92−28315)2 +...+(34521.91−28315)2 ≈ 4511
6
Table 3: the standard deviation for different types of gas between 1990 and 2015.

When we take all of the values into consideration, the standard deviation for
carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases are approximately
4510, 521, 218 and 271 respectively, we can still observe a huge gap between
carbon dioxide emissions and other gases. We can abstract that the viability for
carbon dioxide emissions is much higher than that of other gases. Which indicates
that: the growth for carbon dioxide emissions is much higher than that of other
gases and it has the most influence on the trend of total emissions worldwide.

In order to ensure the observations made regarding the contrast between carbon
dioxide and other greenhouse gases, I obtained two graphs on the greenhouse gas
emissions from the US from the internet, shown as below.
Source: United States Environmental Protection Agency
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases#carbon-dioxide\
Through these two graphs, we can confirm the observations made above that
carbon dioxide emissions account for a large portion of the greenhouse gas
emissions, this trend doesn’t only apply to worldwide values, but also for separate
countries, like the US.

As a conclusion, we can find that for the two factors that are responsible for the
increasing trend of greenhouse gas emissions we analyzed-the proceeding time and
the different types of greenhouse gas:
1. The proceeding time:
There is a strong positive linear relationship between the time and the total
amount of greenhouse gas worldwide. We can find that as time proceeds,
emissions increase at a relatively stable pace throughout the 25 years. The
total increased from 32645.92 to 46760.47 million metric tons of carbon
dioxide equivalents, which is a very unhealthy trend for our environment.
2. The types of gas:
For different types of gases, carbon dioxide has the largest influence on the
amount of emissions and the trend of greenhouse gas emissions throughout
the 25 years. The IQR, difference between the maximum and minimum,
standard deviation all indicate that the carbon dioxide emissions grew the
most throughout the years and the movement of this value has the largest
influence on the trend of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Above are the two main factors I researched and the relationship between these
factors and the overall trend of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

Reflection:
1. While analyzing the factor-types of data, I decided to use the inter-quartile
range. Inter-quartile may use more information compared to that for range,
but it still ignores most of the data. So, I used the standard deviation to
investigate the spread of the data. The standard deviation is more accurate at
measuring spread because it considers the distance of all data from the mean.
2. I think I made the research conclusion more valid and reliable by using three
different approaches to check the result of observing one factor, the types of
gases.
3. The data set I chose are all relevant to the research topic. However, it is
difficult to make comparing different types of gases useful and efficient,
because their minimums (starting points) are so different.
4. There are aspects of this project that needs refining and improving. I only
analyzed two factors that may influence the trend, I didn’t take more
important factors in to account.
5. The factor “types of gas” is not as well analyzed, and the methods used to
approach it are not very effective.
6. because the years involved are not consecutive, I only selected the data from
8 specific years throughout the 25 years. So, the above results could be due
to the limited data analyzed. the validity is low when we only analyze
several data points because we lose data.

Work cited:
"Climate Change Indicators: Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions." united states
environmental protection agency, Apr. 2021,
www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-global-greenhouse-
gas-emissions. Accessed 5 Nov. 2021.

"Overview of Greenhouse Gases." united states environmental protection

agency, www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases. Accessed 5
Nov. 2021.