Articles | Volume 20, issue 20
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11855-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11855-2020
Research article
 | 
22 Oct 2020
Research article |  | 22 Oct 2020

Errors in top-down estimates of emissions using a known source

Wayne M. Angevine, Jeff Peischl, Alice Crawford, Christopher P. Loughner, Ilana B. Pollack, and Chelsea R. Thompson

Data sets

Field campaigns NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory https://esrl.noaa.gov/csl/field.html

HYSPLIT NOAA Air Resources Laboratory https://www.arl.noaa.gov/hysplit/hysplit/

Supporting data W. M. Angevine https://esrl.noaa.gov/csl/groups/csl4/modeldata/

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Short summary
Emissions of air pollutants must be known for a wide variety of applications. Different methods of estimating emissions often disagree substantially. In this study, we apply standard methods to a well-known source, a power plant. We explore the uncertainty implied by the different answers that come from the different methods, different samples taken over several years, and different pollutants. We find that the overall uncertainty of emissions estimates is about 30 %.
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