Asian emissions of CO and NOx: constraints from aircraft and Chinese station data
Observations of CO and NOy from the TRACE-P aircraft
mission over NW Pacific, and from two Chinese ground stations ( Hong
Kong and Lin
An) during spring 2001 are used in
conjunction with an optimal estimation inverse model to constrain estimates of
Asian emissions of CO and NOx. A
priori emissions are based on a detailed bottom-up inventory for the
observation period. The inversion analysis
requires 43% and 47% increases in Chinese emissions of CO and NOx respectively,
distributed heterogeneously, with the
largest adjustments required for Central China. A posteriori estimates of
emissions from biomass burning in
Southeast Asia are much lower than a priori values. Inversion results for
NOx emissions are consistent with CO
emissions in terms of the sense of the adjustments. The above figures compare the a
priori and a posteriori emissions of
CO and NOx for the study region. Inclusion of the station data in the inversion
analysis significantly improves
estimates for emissions from Central and South China . A large increase in NOx
emissions inferred for Central China (a
factor of 3) is attributed to decomposition of organic wastes associated with the
human/animal food chain and extensive
applications of chemical fertilizer. An analysis of emission ratios for CO relative
to NOx for different sectors
indicates that emissions attributed to industry and transportation may be
underestimated in the bottom-up inventory for
Central China, while emissions from the domestic sector may be underestimated for
South China . An increase in emission
factors could help reconcile results from the inversion analysis with the
'bottom-up' approach. Detailed analysis of the
surface observations using a posteriori emissions indicates the
importance of meteorological phenomena,
notably cold fronts in March and small scale high and low pressure systems in April
in modulating concentrations of CO,
with the latter most evident in the data from Lin An. For a full account of this
work, please see Wang et
al. [2004] .
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