Quantifying CO emission rates of industrial point sources from Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument observations

Abstract

Abstract This work demonstrates for the first time the capability of routine Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) operations to quantify CO emission rates down to industrial point sources. We have quantified the CO emission rates of four industrial point sources in Asia, namely Qianlishan Industrial Park (39.9° N, 106.9° E), Jiuyuan Industrial Park (40.7° N, 109.7° E) and Botian Industrial Park (42.2° N, 125.2° E) in China and the Jindal factory (15.2° N, 76.7° E) in India, with TROPOMI CO observations from 2017 to 2020. Qianlishan Industrial Park is a missing source in the emission inventory and we quantify it to be ∼14.0 kg s−1. Our estimates for the other three sources vary between 14.4 and 34.3 kg s−1, within 37%–69% of the inventory values. The plume inversion methods are presented in a manner that can be easily used with other fine-scale emission plumes observed from space. Although only a small number of CO plumes per year for any given industrial point source can be observed under conditions suitable for estimation of emission rates, there are many industrial point sources that can be captured by a good TROPOMI footprint. This work affirms that a constellation of future CO satellites could monitor individual CO point source emissions to support environmental policies.