ACPD Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ACPD Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss. 1680-7375 Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acpd-3-1333-2003 An evolution strategy to estimate emission source distributions on a regional scale from atmospheric observations O’Brien P. 1 Corcoran D. 2 Lowry D. 3 Martin Ryan Marine Science Institute, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland Physics Department, University of Limerick, Ireland Department of Geology, Royal Holloway University of London, UK 13 02 2003 3 2 1333 1366 Copyright: © 2003 P. O’Brien et al. 2003 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ This article is available from https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/3/1333/2003/acpd-3-1333-2003.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/3/1333/2003/acpd-3-1333-2003.pdf

In this paper we present an Evolution Strategy (ES) approach towards the estimation of the location and strength of surface emissions of trace gases based on atmospheric concentration measurements and back-trajectory analyses. The details of the ES developed are outlined. The ES is tested using artificial emission maps at different grid resolutions and the results compared to those obtained on the same problems using Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). In almost all cases, the ES improves on SVD at equivalent resolutions. In addition, a number of insights, which the ES approach brings to the problem of source location and emission strength, are discussed, particularly the limitations on the use of measurement and meteorological data in the determination of emission source distribution.