Abstract
Abstract. Nitrogen dioxide is both a primary pollutant with direct health effects and a key precursor of the secondary pollutant ozone. This paper reports on the development, characterisation and test flight of the Atmospheric Nitrogen Dioxide Imager (ANDI) remote sensing system. The ANDI system includes an imaging UV/Vis grating spectrometer able to capture scattered sunlight spectra for the determination of tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations by way of DOAS slant column density and vertical column density measurements. Results are shown for an ANDI test flight over Leicester City in the UK on a cloud-free winter day in February 2013. Retrieved NO2 columns gridded to a surface resolution of 80 m × 20 m revealed hotspots in a series of locations around Leicester City, including road junctions, the train station, major car parks, areas of heavy industry, a nearby airport (East Midlands) and a power station (Ratcliffe-on-Soar). In the city centre the dominant source of NO2 emissions was identified as road traffic, contributing to a background concentration as well as producing localised hotspots. Quantitative analysis revealed a significant urban increment over the city centre which increased throughout the flight.
Highlights
Statistical and epidemiological studies have linked atmospheric pollution in urban environments to health problems in humans (Latza et al, 2008)
The test flight was divided into four components: three spatial regions, Leicester City centre, the M1 motorway and Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, and a study on the temporal variability of NO2 over Leicester City centre
The VCDs in this work are themselves relative to the background rural NO2 present at the reference region when the reference spectra were measured. The degree of this offset cannot be accurately estimated at the time of this work, but analysis of satellite-derived tropospheric NO2 VCDs from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI; Levelt et al, 2006) over Leicester measured during February 2013 suggest that the background column could be between 0.1 and 0.8 × 10 16 molec cm−2
Summary
Statistical and epidemiological studies have linked atmospheric pollution in urban environments to health problems in humans (Latza et al, 2008). Recent studies estimate that the economic impact of poor air quality in the UK is as high as EUR 28 billion yr−1 (HoCEAC, 2011). In Germany, this figure is even higher at EUR 33 billion yr−1 due to industrial emissions alone (EEA, 2011). Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is an atmospheric pollutant abundant in urban areas owing to emissions from traffic exhaust, central heating systems and industrial activities. Correlations have been found between the atmospheric concentration of NO2 and respiratory symptoms, cardiovascular symptoms and hospital admissions (COMEAP, 2011). NO2 is a known tracer/marker for other combustion products such as sub-micron particulate matter (Wehner and Wiedensohler, 2003) and is a precursor for ozone formation (Monks et al, 2009)
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