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A 15-year record of CO emissions constrained by MOPITT CO observations

Journal Article · · Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (Online)
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6]
  1. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States); National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
  2. California Inst. of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States)
  3. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
  4. Univ. of Toronto, Toronto, ON (Canada)
  5. Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States)
  6. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)

Long-term measurements from satellites and surface stations have demonstrated a decreasing trend of tropospheric carbon monoxide (CO) in the Northern Hemisphere over the past decade. Likely explanations for this decrease include changes in anthropogenic, fires, and/or biogenic emissions or changes in the primary chemical sink hydroxyl radical (OH). Using remotely sensed CO measurements from the Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) satellite instrument, in situ methyl chloroform (MCF) measurements from the World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases (WDCGG) and the adjoint of the GEOS-Chem model, we estimate the change in global CO emissions from 2001 to 2015. We show that the loss rate of MCF varied by 0.2 % in the past 15 years, indicating that changes in global OH distributions do not explain the recent decrease in CO. Our two-step inversion approach for estimating CO emissions is intended to mitigate the effect of bias errors in the MOPITT data as well as model errors in transport and chemistry, which are the primary factors contributing to the uncertainties when quantifying CO emissions using these remotely sensed data. Our results confirm that the decreasing trend of tropospheric CO in the Northern Hemisphere is due to decreasing CO emissions from anthropogenic and biomass burning sources. In particular, we find decreasing CO emissions from the United States and China in the past 15 years, and unchanged anthropogenic CO emissions from Europe since 2008. We find decreasing trends of biomass burning CO emissions from boreal North America, boreal Asia and South America, but little change over Africa. In contrast to prior results, we find that a positive trend in CO emissions is likely for India and southeast Asia.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1479310
Journal Information:
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (Online), Journal Name: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (Online) Journal Issue: 7 Vol. 17; ISSN 1680-7324
Publisher:
European Geosciences UnionCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (29)

Balance of Emission and Dynamical Controls on Ozone During the Korea‐United States Air Quality Campaign From Multiconstituent Satellite Data Assimilation journal January 2019
Reduced biomass burning emissions reconcile conflicting estimates of the post-2006 atmospheric methane budget journal December 2017
Climatology and long-term evolution of ozone and carbon monoxide in the upper troposphere–lower stratosphere (UTLS) at northern midlatitudes, as seen by IAGOS from 1995 to 2013 journal January 2018
Biomass burning aerosol over the Amazon: analysis of aircraft, surface and satellite observations using a global aerosol model journal January 2019
Quantifying burning efficiency in megacities using the NO2∕CO ratio from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) journal January 2020
Atmospheric mercury in the Southern Hemisphere – Part 1: Trend and inter-annual variations in atmospheric mercury at Cape Point, South Africa, in 2007–2017, and on Amsterdam Island in 2012–2017 journal July 2020
Quantification of CO emissions from the city of Madrid using MOPITT satellite retrievals and WRF simulations posted_content July 2017
Atmospheric mercury in the Southern Hemisphere – Part 2: Source apportionment analysis at Cape Point station, South Africa posted_content February 2020
Radiance-based Retrieval Bias Mitigation for the MOPITT Instrument: The Version 8 Product posted_content March 2019
Lagged effects regulate the inter-annual variability of the tropical carbon balance journal January 2020
Updated tropospheric chemistry reanalysis and emission estimates, TCR-2, for 2005–2018 journal January 2020
A Regional multi-Air Pollutant Assimilation System (RAPAS v1.0) for emission estimates: system development and application posted_content August 2021
Evaluation of MOPITT Version 7 joint TIR-NIR XCO retrievals with TCCON text January 2019
Top‐Down CO Emissions Based On IASI Observations and Hemispheric Constraints on OH Levels journal February 2018
Links Between Carbon Monoxide and Climate Indices for the Southern Hemisphere and Tropical Fire Regions journal September 2018
Modeling Regional Pollution Transport Events During KORUS‐AQ: Progress and Challenges in Improving Representation of Land‐Atmosphere Feedbacks journal September 2018
Quantifying Emissions of CO and NO x Using Observations From MOPITT, OMI, TES, and OSIRIS journal January 2019
Source Contributions to Carbon Monoxide Concentrations During KORUS‐AQ Based on CAM‐chem Model Applications journal March 2019
Multiconstituent Data Assimilation With WRF‐Chem/DART: Potential for Adjusting Anthropogenic Emissions and Improving Air Quality Forecasts Over Eastern China journal July 2019
Unexpected slowdown of US pollutant emission reduction in the past decade journal April 2018
Rapid decline in carbon monoxide emissions and export from East Asia between years 2005 and 2016 journal March 2018
Detecting drought impact on terrestrial biosphere carbon fluxes over contiguous US with satellite observations journal September 2018
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Global atmospheric carbon monoxide budget 2000–2017 inferred from multi-species atmospheric inversions journal January 2019
Improved method for linear carbon monoxide simulation and source attribution in atmospheric chemistry models illustrated using GEOS-Chem v9 journal January 2017

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