Decadal variabilities in tropospheric nitrogen oxides over United States, Europe, and China

Global trends in tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) have changed dramatically in the past decade. Here, we investigate tropospheric NO2 variabilities over United States, Europe, and E. China in 2005–2018 to explore the mechanisms governing the variation of this critical pollutant. We found large uncertainties in the trends of anthropogenic nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions, for example, the reductions of NOx emissions, derived with different approaches and data sets, are in the range of 35%–50% over the United States and 15%–45% over Europe in 2005–2018. By contrast, the analysis in this work indicates declines of anthropogenic NOx emissions by about 40% and 25% over the United States and Europe, respectively, in 2005–2018, and about 20% over E. China in 2012–2018. However, the shift of major NOx sources from power generation to industrial and transportation sectors has led to noticeable diminishing effects in emission controls. Furthermore, satellite measurements exhibit the influence of NO2 background levels over the United States and Europe, which offset the impacts of anthropogenic emission declines, resulting in flatter trends of tropospheric NO2 over the United States and Europe. Our analysis further reveals underestimation of background NO2 by chemical transport models, which can lead to inaccurate interpretations of satellite measurements. We use surface in-situ NO2 observations to diagnose the satellite-observed NO2 trends and find top-down NOx emissions over urban grids represent the changes in anthropogenic NOx emissions better. This work highlights the importance of comprehensive applications of different analysis approaches to better characterizing atmospheric composition evolution.

To Access Resource:

Questions? Email Resource Support Contact:

  • opensky@ucar.edu
    UCAR/NCAR - Library

Resource Type publication
Temporal Range Begin N/A
Temporal Range End N/A
Temporal Resolution N/A
Bounding Box North Lat N/A
Bounding Box South Lat N/A
Bounding Box West Long N/A
Bounding Box East Long N/A
Spatial Representation N/A
Spatial Resolution N/A
Related Links N/A
Additional Information N/A
Resource Format PDF
Standardized Resource Format PDF
Asset Size N/A
Legal Constraints

Copyright author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.


Access Constraints None
Software Implementation Language N/A

Resource Support Name N/A
Resource Support Email opensky@ucar.edu
Resource Support Organization UCAR/NCAR - Library
Distributor N/A
Metadata Contact Name N/A
Metadata Contact Email opensky@ucar.edu
Metadata Contact Organization UCAR/NCAR - Library

Author Jiang, Zhe
Zhu, Rui
Miyazaki, Kazuyuki
McDonald, Brian C.
Klimont, Zbigniew
Zheng, Bo
Boersma, K. Folkert
Zhang, Qiang
Worden, Helen
Worden, John R.
Henze, Daven K.
Jones, Dylan B. A.
Denier van der Gon, Hugo A. C.
Eskes, Henk
Publisher UCAR/NCAR - Library
Publication Date 2022-02-16T00:00:00
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Not Assigned
Alternate Identifier N/A
Resource Version N/A
Topic Category geoscientificInformation
Progress N/A
Metadata Date 2023-08-18T18:16:35.365575
Metadata Record Identifier edu.ucar.opensky::articles:25045
Metadata Language eng; USA
Suggested Citation Jiang, Zhe, Zhu, Rui, Miyazaki, Kazuyuki, McDonald, Brian C., Klimont, Zbigniew, Zheng, Bo, Boersma, K. Folkert, Zhang, Qiang, Worden, Helen, Worden, John R., Henze, Daven K., Jones, Dylan B. A., Denier van der Gon, Hugo A. C., Eskes, Henk. (2022). Decadal variabilities in tropospheric nitrogen oxides over United States, Europe, and China. UCAR/NCAR - Library. http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7bg2sh2. Accessed 06 February 2025.

Harvest Source