Temporal variations in CO₂ and CO at Ahmedabad in western India

Abstract

Abstract. About 70 % of the anthropogenic CO2 is emitted from the megacities and urban areas of the world. In-situ simultaneous measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) have been made using a state-of-the-art laser based cavity ring down spectroscopy technique at Ahmedabad, an urban site in western India, from November 2013 to May 2015 with a break during March to June 2014. Annual average concentrations of CO2 and CO have been found to be 413.0 ± 13.7 ppm and 0.50 ± 0.37 ppm respectively. Both the species show strong seasonality, with lower concentrations of 400.3 ± 6.8 ppm and 0.19 ± 0.13 ppm, respectively during the south-west monsoon, and higher values of 419.6 ± 22.8 ppm and 0.72 ± 0.68 ppm, respectively in autumn (SON). Strong diurnal variations are also observed for both the species. The common factors for diurnal cycles of CO2 and CO are the vertical mixing and rush hour traffic, while the influence of biospheric fluxes is also seen in CO2 diurnal cycle. Using CO and CO2 covariation, we differentiate the anthropogenic and biospheric components of CO2 and found that significant contributions of biospheric respiration and anthropogenic emission in the late night (00:00–05:00 IST) and evening rush hours (18:00–22:00 IST) respectively. We compute total yearly emission of CO to be 69.2 ± 0.07 Gg for the study region using the observed CO : CO2 correlation slope and bottom-up CO2 emission inventory. This calculated emission of CO is 52 % larger than the estimated emission of CO by the EDGAR inventory. The observations of CO2 have been compared with an atmospheric chemistry transport model (i.e., ACTM), which incorporates various components of CO2 fluxes. ACTM is able to capture the basic variabilities, but both diurnal and seasonal amplitudes are largely underestimated compared to the observations. We attribute this underestimation by model to uncertainties in terrestrial biosphere fluxes and coarse model resolution. The fossil fuel signal from the model shows fairly good correlation with observed CO2 variations, which supports the overall dominance of fossil fuel emissions over the biospheric fluxes in this urban region.