Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2023-35
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2023-35
07 Feb 2023
 | 07 Feb 2023
Status: a revised version of this preprint was accepted for the journal ACP.

Quantification of carbon monoxide emissions from African cities using TROPOMI

Gijs Leguijt, Joannes D. Maasakkers, Hugo A. C. Denier van der Gon, Arjo J. Segers, Tobias Borsdorff, and Ilse Aben

Abstract. Carbon monoxide (CO) is an air pollutant that plays an important role in atmospheric chemistry and is mostly emitted by forest fires and incomplete combustion in for example road transport, residential heating, and industry. As CO is co-emitted with fossil fuel CO2 combustion emissions, it can be used as a proxy for CO2. Following the Paris agreement, there is a need for independent verification of reported activity-based bottom-up CO2 emissions through atmospheric measurements. CO can be observed daily at global scale with the TROPOMI satellite instrument with daily global coverage at a resolution down to 5.5 × 7 km2. To take advantage of this unique TROPOMI dataset, we develop a cross-sectional flux-based emission quantification method that can be applied to quantify emissions from a large number of cities, without relying on computationally expensive inversions. We focus on Africa as a region with quickly growing cities and large uncertainties in current emission estimates. We use a full year of high-resolution WRF-simulations over three cities to evaluate and optimize the performance of our cross-sectional flux emission quantification method and show its reliability down to emission rates of 0.1 Tg CO yr−1. Comparison of the TROPOMI-based emission estimates to the DACCIWA and EDGAR bottom-up inventories shows CO emission rates in northern Africa are underestimated in EDGAR, suggesting overestimated combustion efficiencies. We see the opposite when comparing TROPOMI to the DACCIWA inventory in South Africa and Côte d'Ivoire, where CO emission factors appear to be overestimated. Over Lagos and Kano (Nigeria) we find that potential errors in the spatial disaggregation of national emissions cause errors in DACCIWA and EDGAR, respectively. Finally, we show that our computationally-efficient quantification method combined with the daily TROPOMI observations can identify a weekend effect in the road transport-dominated CO emissions from Cairo and Algiers.

Gijs Leguijt et al.

Status: final response (author comments only)

Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor | : Report abuse
  • RC1: 'Comment on acp-2023-35', Anonymous Referee #1, 01 Mar 2023
  • RC2: 'Comment on acp-2023-35', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Mar 2023
  • AC1: 'Comment on acp-2023-35', Gijs Leguijt, 02 May 2023

Gijs Leguijt et al.

Gijs Leguijt et al.

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Short summary
We present a fast method to evaluate carbon monoxide emissions from cities in Africa. Carbon monoxide is important for climate change in an indirect way as it is linked to ozone, methane and carbon dioxide. Our measurements are made with a satellite that sees the entire globe every single day. This means that we can check from space whether the current knowledge of emission rates is up to date. We make the comparison and show that the emission rates in northern Africa are underestimated.
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