Anthropogenic NOx emission estimates for China based on satellite measurements and chemistry-transport modelling

Recent studies have shown that significant growth in tropospheric NO2 has occurred over China, especially over its major cities. The main reason for this growth is the increase in anthropogenic NOx emissions as a result from increasing power consumption and traffic. The purpose of this study is to improve the anthropogenic NOx emission estimates in China, with the use of satellite observations from GOME and SCIAMACHY and the chemistry transport model TM5.
Firstly, the relationship between NO2 columns and anthropogenic NOx emissions is determined. Thereafter it is applied, in combination with satellite observations of tropospheric NO2, to estimate the anthropogenic NOx emissions in China. Multiple iterations have been performed to account for NOx transport and to improve the emission estimates.
This approach has been applied to multiple years of data, whereafter a linear and exponential model have been used to fit the dataset. The results show that the exponential model fits better to the dataset and shows an increase of 20% in anthropogenic NOx emissions in 2005.