Quantifying rates and drivers of change in long-term sector- and country-specific trends of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions Fatma Ozturk, Melek Keles, Fatih Evrendilek n Department of Environmental Engineering, Abant Izzet Baysal University, 14280 Bolu, Turkey article info Article history: Received 28 July 2015 Received in revised form 2 February 2016 Accepted 8 July 2016 Keywords: Annex-I countries Kyoto protocol Greenhouse gas emissions Data-driven modeling abstract Significance, direction, rate, and drivers of change in total carbon dioxide -equivalent (CO 2 -eq.) green- house gas (GHG) ( − GHG CO 2 e ) emission from eight sectors of 41 Annex-I countries were quantified over the period of 1990–2012 using data-driven models. The Mann-Kendall (MK) test for trend analysis in- dicated an overall downward trend by 10.5% with a Sen's slope of À613 Mt CO 2 -eq./year. The highest − GHG CO 2 e emission growth and reduction occurred with the sectors of energy, and land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) at rates of 1.2 and À1.0 gigatons (Gt) CO 2 -eq./year, respectively. Out of the 41 countries, 18 (44%) and 12 (29%) significantly reduced and increased their − GHG CO 2 e emission rates, respectively (p o0.1). The best-fit multiple non-linear regression (MNLR) model as a function of popu- lation density, gross domestic product per capita, fractional contribution of renewable energy to total energy production, country, and year elucidated 99.8% of variation in total − GHG CO 2 e emission and had the predictive power of 99.8% based on leave-one-out cross-validation. & 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 823 2. Material and methods ................................................................................................ 824 2.1. Data description............................................................................................... 824 2.2. Direction of trends............................................................................................. 824 2.3. Rate of trends ................................................................................................ 825 2.4. Data-driven modeling .......................................................................................... 825 3. Results and discussion................................................................................................ 825 3.1. GHG emission trends of sectors .................................................................................. 825 3.2. GHG emission trends of countries ................................................................................ 826 3.3. Prediction and validation of total CO 2 -equivalent GHG emissions ....................................................... 826 4. Conclusions ........................................................................................................ 827 Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................... 831 References ............................................................................................................. 831 1. Introduction Svante Arrhenius (1896) is the first researcher to quantify and to speculate about impacts of the increased atmospheric con- centration of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) on the greenhouse effect and long-term variations in climate [1]. Charles D. Keeling performed the first continuous CO 2 measurement at 3400 m at Mauna Loa (HI, USA) in 1958 to better understand the relationship between Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2016.07.035 1364-0321/& 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. n Correspondence to: Abant Izzet Baysal University, Faculty of Engineering & Architecture, Department of Environmental Engineering, Golkoy Campus, 14280 Bolu, Turkey. E-mail addresses: oztfatma@gmail.com (F. Ozturk), melekkeles16@gmail.com (M. Keles), fevrendilek@ibu.edu.tr (F. Evrendilek). Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 65 (2016) 823–831