Natural Volatile Organic Compounds (NVOC) Emissions Inventory from the Global Emissions Inventory Activity (GEIA), IGBP/IGAC

Natural sources of VOC emissions to the atmosphere include marine and fresh water, soil and sediments, microbial decomposition of organic matter, geological hydrocarbon reservoirs, plant foliage and woody material, and enhanced emissions from vegetation during harvesting or burning. NVOCs are important in tropospheric chemistry and in the global carbon cycle. VOC emissions are critical in controlling the OH concentration of the troposphere and so may play a major role in determining the growth rates of atmospheric CH4 (methane) and CO (carbon monoxide) concentrations.

Several emissions inventories of VOCs have been published and they indicate that annual natural emissions of isoprene and monoterpenes exceed anthropogenic VOC emissions on a global scale. Each line of data in the GEIA inventory consists of an integer grid number and real specie values for the temporal resolution of the data (one month). Each file contains at most 360 x 180 data lines.