Spatio-temporal Distributions of Tropospheric NO2 over oases in Taklimakan Desert, China

Abstract

Soil biogenic NO emission is one of the most important sources of atmospheric nitrogen oxides (NOx) worldwide. However, the estimation of soil source, especially in arid areas presents large uncertainties because of the substantial lack of measurements. In this study, we selected the Ruoqiang oases on the southeastern edge of the Taklimakan Desert, China as the study area and applied Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) NO2 retrievals (DOMINO v2.0, 2005–2011) to investigate the spatial distribution and seasonal variations in tropospheric NO2 vertical column density (VCD). High NO2 VCDs were observed over the oases (farmlands and natural vegetation), with the highest value obtained during summer, and lowest during winter. Pulses were observed during spring. We conducted in-situ measurements in June 2011 in Milan oasis and employed ground-based multi-axis differential optical absorption spectroscopy (MAX-DOAS) instruments to validate satellite NO2 retrievals. The findings are as follows: 1) in the study area soil biogenic NO emission is the dominant source of tropospheric NO2; 2) oases (farmlands) are hotspots of tropospheric NO2, and a higher increase in tropospheric NO2 is found in oases from winter to summer; and 3) enhancement of soil biogenic NO emission due to soil managements is predictable. Given the rapid agricultural development in the southern Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, researches on soil biogenic NO emission and increase in tropospheric NOx should be given more importance.