Premium
Lifetimes and emissions of SO 2 from point sources estimated from OMI
Author(s) -
Fioletov V. E.,
McLinden C. A.,
Krotkov N.,
Li C.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2015gl063148
Subject(s) - ozone monitoring instrument , environmental science , satellite , sulfur dioxide , ozone , principal component analysis , wind speed , atmospheric sciences , meteorology , point source , point (geometry) , remote sensing , computational physics , physics , statistics , mathematics , geology , optics , chemistry , geometry , inorganic chemistry , astronomy
A new method to estimate sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) lifetimes and emissions from point sources using satellite measurements is described. The method is based on fitting satellite SO 2 vertical column density to a three‐dimensional parameterization as a function of the coordinates and wind speed. An effective lifetime (or, more accurately, decay time) and emission rate are then determined from the parameters of the fit. The method was applied to measurements from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) processed with the new principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm in the vicinity of approximately 50 large U.S. near‐point sources. The obtained results were then compared with available emission inventories. The correlation between estimated and reported emissions was about 0.91 with the estimated lifetimes between 4 and 12 h. It is demonstrated that individual sources with annual SO 2 emissions as low as 30 kt yr −1 can produce a statistically significant signal in OMI data.