Open AccessEstimating power plant CO2 emission using OCO-2 XCO2 and high resolution WRF-Chem simulations
Author(s) -
Tao Zheng,
Ray Nassar,
Martin Baxter
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
environmental research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.37
H-Index - 124
ISSN - 1748-9326
DOI - 10.1088/1748-9326/ab25ae
Subject(s) - weather research and forecasting model , environmental science , power station , meteorology , atmospheric sciences , plume , horizontal resolution , wind speed , range (aeronautics) , physics , engineering , aerospace engineering , thermodynamics
Anthropogenic CO 2 emission from fossil fuel combustion has major impacts on the global climate. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) observations have previously been used to estimate individual power plant emissions with a Gaussian plume model assuming constant wind fields. The present work assesses the feasibility of estimating power plant CO 2 emission using high resolution chemistry transport model simulations with OCO-2 observation data. In the new framework, 1.33 km Weather Research and Forecasting-Chem (WRF)-Chem simulation results are used to calculate the Jacobian matrix, which is then used with the OCO-2 XCO 2 data to obtain power plant daily mean emission rates, through a maximum likelihood estimation. We applied the framework to the seven OCO-2 observations of near mid-to-large coal burning power plants identified in Nassar et al (2017 Geophys. Res. Lett. 44, 10045–53). Our estimation results closely match the reported emission rates at the Westar power plant (Kansas, USA), with a reported value of 26.67 ktCO 2 /day, and our estimated value at 25.82–26.47 ktCO 2 /day using OCO-2 v8 data, and 22.09–22.80 ktCO 2 /day using v9 data. At Ghent, KY, USA, our estimations using three versions (v7, v8, and v9) range from 9.84–20.40 ktCO 2 /day, which are substantially lower than the reported value (29.17 ktCO 2 /day). We attribute this difference to diminished WRF-Chem wind field simulation accuracy. The results from the seven cases indicate that accurate estimation requires accurate meteorological simulations and high quality XCO 2 data. In addition, the strength and orientation (relative to the OCO-2 ground track) of the XCO 2 enhancement are important for accurate and reliable estimation. Compared with the Gaussian plume model based approach, the high resolution WRF-Chem simulation based approach provides a framework for addressing varying wind fields, and possible expansion to city level emission estimation.