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Carbon monoxide budget in the northern hemisphere
Author(s) -
Bakwin Peter S.,
Tans Pieter P.,
Novelli Paul C.
Publication year - 1994
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 - 10.1029/94gl00006
Subject(s) - carbon monoxide , northern hemisphere , troposphere , environmental science , southern hemisphere , sink (geography) , atmospheric sciences , fossil fuel , combustion , abundance (ecology) , air quality index , greenhouse gas , climatology , meteorology , chemistry , oceanography , geography , geology , ecology , cartography , organic chemistry , biology , biochemistry , catalysis
To improve urban air quality the major industrialized nations of the West took steps during the 1970s and 1980s to reduce carbon monoxide (CO) emissions from automobiles and other industrial sources. Overall, CO/CO 2 emission ratios from the mix of fossil fuel combustion sources have been reduced by about half during 1976–1990. Also, the tropospheric abundance of hydroxyl radical (OH), which is the main sink for CO, is proposed to have increased globally by about 1.0±0.8% yr −1 [Prinn et al., 1992]. We use a simple two‐box model to examine the impact of shrinking emissions and increasing OH on the global abundance of CO. We find that these factors contribute about equally in reducing CO levels in the Northern Hemisphere troposphere by about 1.8±0.8 ppb yr −1 on average.