Direct space‐based observations of anthropogenic CO₂ emission areas from OCO‐2

Abstract

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion have large impacts on climate. In order to monitor the increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, accurate spaceborne observations—as available from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory‐2 (OCO‐2)—are needed. This work provides the first direct observation of anthropogenic CO2 from OCO‐2 over the main pollution regions: eastern USA, central Europe, and East Asia. This is achieved by deseasonalizing and detrending OCO‐2 CO2 observations to derive CO2 anomalies. Several small isolated emission areas (such as large cities) are detectable from the anomaly maps. The spatial distribution of the CO2 anomaly matches the features observed in the maps of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument NO2 tropospheric columns, used as an indicator of atmospheric pollution. The results of a cluster analysis confirm the spatial correlation between CO2 and NO2 data over areas with different amounts of pollution. We found positive correlation between CO2 anomalies and emission inventories. The results demonstrate the power of spaceborne data for monitoring anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Characterizing Regional-Scale Combustion Using Satellite Retrievals of CO, NO2 and CO2

“…However, most of these are focused on either field campaigns for specific megacities (e.g., Los Angeles or Paris [14]), specific regions (e.g., Europe by [20]), or specific ratios between two compounds (e.g., ∆CO/∆CO 2 , [17] or ∆NO x /∆CO 2 , [7]). For satellite analyses in particular, several multi-species studies have been designed to estimate emissions of air pollutants or surface fluxes of greenhouse gases; yet very few studies have focused on analyzing both from complementary datasets.…”

“…We focus this analysis on the substantial local emission sources from biomass burning and large urban regions (megacities). These two sources were selected due to their relative source strength, and because they can be readily observed through analysis of satellite retrievals of atmospheric composition, specifically CO, CO 2 , and NO 2 [6][7][8]. Each of these constituents is emitted concurrently during combustion, and exhibits distinct atmospheric signatures that depend on fuel type, combustion technology/process/practice, and regulatory policies in the region.…”

“…Important work has been carried out in recent years toward understanding emissions through analysis of enhancements of chemical species (including isotopes) based on ground [10][11][12][13][14], aircraft [15,16], and satellite observations ( [7,[17][18][19][20]). However, most of these are focused on either field campaigns for specific megacities (e.g., Los Angeles or Paris [14]), specific regions (e.g., Europe by [20]), or specific ratios between two compounds (e.g., ∆CO/∆CO 2 , [17] or ∆NO x /∆CO 2 , [7]).…”

Assessment of Anthropogenic Methane Emissions over Large Regions Based on GOSAT Observations and High Resolution Transport Modeling

“…Considering the sparsity of the ground-based observation networks and the necessity for wide spatial and temporal coverage, satellite observations such as from GOSAT can be an additional or alternative tool for estimation and monitoring of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., [25][26][27][28][29]) by emission hotspots such as megacities and power plants and other intensive sources such as biomass burning [21,30]. Therefore, there is an emerging interest in the use of space-based observation of greenhouse gases for estimation and verification of their emissions.…”

The potential of satellite spectro-imagery for monitoring CO<sub>2</sub> emissions from large cities

“…Due to such a high sampling density along the satellite overpass and to their relatively high theoretical precision, OCO-2 data may bring more insight into the XCO 2 field nearby the cities than SCIA-MACHY and GOSAT, especially when using the specific targeting mode of this mission . Hakkarainen et al (2016) highlighted a significant correlation between the spatial anomalies in the OCO-2 data and the spatial distribution of the anthropogenic emissions, and in particular of the large urban areas. Furthermore, Nassar et al (2017) and Schwandner et al (2017) derived estimates of CO 2 emissions from large point sources (some large power plants and a volcano) using OCO-2 observations, raising expectations these observations could also be used to estimate the emissions from dense cities.…”