Articles | Volume 22, issue 2
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-1333-2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-1333-2022
Research article
 | 
26 Jan 2022
Research article |  | 26 Jan 2022

A new method for inferring city emissions and lifetimes of nitrogen oxides from high-resolution nitrogen dioxide observations: a model study

Fei Liu, Zhining Tao, Steffen Beirle, Joanna Joiner, Yasuko Yoshida, Steven J. Smith, K. Emma Knowland, and Thomas Wagner

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Cited articles

Beirle, S., Boersma, K. F., Platt, U., Lawrence, M. G., and Wagner, T.: Megacity emissions and lifetimes of nitrogen oxides probed from space, Science, 333, 1737–1739, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1207824, 2011. 
Beirle, S., Borger, C., Dörner, S., Li, A., Hu, Z., Liu, F., Wang, Y., and Wagner, T.: Pinpointing nitrogen oxide emissions from space, Sci. Adv., 5, eaax9800, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax9800, 2019. 
Berge, E., Huang, H.-C., Chang, J., and Liu, T.-H.: A study of the importance of initial conditions for photochemical oxidant modeling, J. Geophys. Res., 106, 1347–1363, https://doi.org/10.1029/2000jd900227, 2001. 
Boersma, K. F., Eskes, H. J., Veefkind, J. P., Brinksma, E. J., van der A, R. J., Sneep, M., van den Oord, G. H. J., Levelt, P. F., Stammes, P., Gleason, J. F., and Bucsela, E. J.: Near-real time retrieval of tropospheric NO2 from OMI, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 7, 2103–2118, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-7-2103-2007, 2007. 
Butler, T. M., Lawrence, M. G., Gurjar, B. R., van Aardenne, J., Schultz, M., and Lelieveld, J.: The representation of emissions from megacities in global emission inventories, Atmos. Environ., 42, 703–719, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2007.09.060, 2008. 
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In this work, we present a novel method to infer NOx emissions and lifetimes based on tropospheric NO2 observations together with reanalysis wind fields for cities located in polluted backgrounds. We evaluate the accuracy of the method using synthetic NO2 observations derived from a high-resolution model simulation. Our work provides an estimate for uncertainties in satellite-derived emissions inferred from chemical transport model (CTM)-independent approaches.
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