Publication Date:
2016-05-12
Description:
Ammonia (NH 3 ), whose main source in the troposphere is agriculture, is an important gaseous precursor of atmospheric particulate matter (PM). We derived daily ammonia emissions using NH 3 total columns measured from the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) onboard Metop-A, at a relatively high spatial resolution (grid-cell of 0.5° x 0.5°). During the European spring haze episodes of March 2012, 24 th to 31 st and March 2014, 8 th to 15 th , IASI reveals NH 3 total column magnitudes highlighting higher NH 3 emissions over Central Europe (especially over Germany, Czech Republic and eastern France) from the ones provided by the European reference EMEP inventory. These ammonia emissions exhibit in addition a large day-to-day variability, certainly due to spreading practices. The increase of NH 3 emissions in the model, that reaches +300% locally, leads to an increase of both NH 3 and PM 2.5 surface concentrations and allows for a better comparison with independent measurements (in terms of bias, root mean square error and correlation). This study suggests that there are good prospects for better quantifying NH 3 emissions by atmospheric inversions.
Print ISSN:
0094-8276
Electronic ISSN:
1944-8007
Topics:
Geosciences
,
Physics
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