Abstract
Abstract. Long-term satellite measurements of nitrogen dioxide in the troposphere are used in combination with a continental scale air quality model in order to verify and improve available estimates of multi-annual changes of emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in Europe and the Mediterranean area between 1996 and 2005. As a result, a measurement-based data set of NOx emissions on a 1° by 1° grid and averaged over summer months is elaborated. The results are compared with emission data based on the EMEP emission inventory. Our data are in agreement with the EMEP estimates suggesting a general decline in the level of NOx emissions in Western and Central European countries (France, Germany, Great Britain and Poland). Over Southern Europe and for shipping emissions, neutral to positive trends are found both for the inverted and bottom-up emissions. In contrast, considerable differences between both data sets are found in some other countries. In particular, significant negative trends instead of the positive ones in the "bottom-up" inventory are found for the Balkan countries, Russia and Turkey. The NOx emission trends derived from satellite measurements demonstrate larger spatial heterogeneity than those calculated with the EMEP data, especially in Russia and Ukraine. The obtained estimates of the decadal trends in NOx emissions for Great Britain are found to be consistent with independent data from the U.K. Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN). It is also found that using our emission estimates yields better agreement of model calculations with near-surface ozone measurements of the European EMEP network.
Highlights
It is widely recognized that the ability of atmospheric models to represent the current state and to predict possible future changes of the chemical composition of the atmosphere depends strongly on the quality of available information about sources of atmospheric pollutants
These results are important, because they allow a direct confirmation of the estimation of emission trends made by EMEP with satellite based measurements
In this study we used the data on tropospheric NO2 columns amounts derived from long-term satellite measurements of GOME and SCIAMACHY in order to investigate and estimate decadal changes in nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East
Summary
It is widely recognized that the ability of atmospheric models to represent the current state and to predict possible future changes of the chemical composition of the atmosphere depends strongly on the quality of available information about sources (emissions) of atmospheric pollutants. One promising approach for the validation of the available emission inventories and for generation of improved emission data involves inverse modelling of sources of atmospheric gases (see, e.g., Enting, 2002). In this method, observational data are used as constraints to emission parameters, which are used as input for an atmospheric model. A strong impetus for the further development of atmospheric inverse modelling studies has been provided by recent remarkable progress in satellite measurements of the composition of the lower atmosphere. The retrieved tropospheric data products have already been used in several studies aimed at obtaining better estimates of emissions of respective gases. Tropospheric NO2 columns derived from the GOME and SCIAMACHY measurements (Burrows et al, 1999; Bovensmann et al, 1999) have been used for the estimation of total NOx emissions
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