Quantifying CO emission rates of industrial point sources from TROPOMI observations
Abstract This work demonstrates for the first time the capability of Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) routine operations to quantify CO emission rates down to industrial point sources. We have quantified CO emission rates of four industrial point sources in Asia (i.e., 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 Jindal Factory (15.2°N, 76.7°E) in India) with TROPOMI CO observations from 2017 to 2020. The Qianlishan industrial park is a missing source in emission inventory and we quantify it to be ~14.0 kg/s. Our estimates for other three sources vary over 14.4 to 34.3 kg/s, which are within 37–69% of the inventory values. The plume inversion methods are presented in a manner that can be easily used to other fine-scale emission plumes observed from space. Though only a small number of CO plumes per year for any given industrial point source can be observed in conditions suitable for emission rates estimation, there are many industrial point sources 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 environment policy.