Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 111, Issue 23, Pages 8386-8391Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1321883111
Keywords
air pollution; greenhouse gases; climate change
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Funding
- LANL Laboratory Directed Research and Development project Multi-Scale Science Framework for Climate Treaty Verification: Attributing & Tracking GHG Fluxes Using Co-Emitted Signatures
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There is a pressing need to verify air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic fossil energy sources to enforce current and future regulations. We demonstrate the feasibility of using simultaneous remote sensing observations of column abundances of CO2, CO, and NO2 to inform and verify emission inventories. We report, to our knowledge, the first ever simultaneous column enhancements in CO2 (3-10 ppm) and NO2 (1-3 Dobson Units), and evidence of delta(CO2)-C-13 depletion in an urban region with two large coal-fired power plants with distinct scrubbing technologies that have resulted in Delta NOx/Delta CO2 emission ratios that differ by a factor of two. Ground-based total atmospheric column trace gas abundances change synchronously and correlate well with simultaneous in situ point measurements during plume interceptions. Emission ratios of Delta NOx/Delta CO2 and Delta SO2/Delta CO2 derived from in situ atmospheric observations agree with those reported by in-stack monitors. Forward simulations using in-stack emissions agree with remote column CO2 and NO2 plume observations after fine scale adjustments. Both observed and simulated column Delta NO2/Delta CO2 ratios indicate that a large fraction (70-75%) of the region is polluted. We demonstrate that the column emission ratios of Delta NO2/Delta CO2 can resolve changes from day-to-day variation in sources with distinct emission factors (clean and dirty power plants, urban, and fires). We apportion these sources by using NO2, SO2, and CO as signatures. Our high-frequency remote sensing observations of CO2 and coemitted pollutants offer promise for the verification of power plant emission factors and abatement technologies from ground and space.
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