Global inventory of nitrogen oxide emissions constrained by space‐based observations of NO 2 columns

We use tropospheric NO 2 columns from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) satellite instrument to derive top‐down constraints on emissions of nitrogen oxides (NO x ≡ NO + NO 2 ), and combine these with a priori information from a bottom‐up emission inventory (with error weighting) to achieve an optimized a posteriori estimate of the global distribution of surface NO x emissions. Our GOME NO 2 retrieval improves on previous work by accounting for scattering and absorption of radiation by aerosols; the effect on the air mass factor (AMF) ranges from +10 to −40% depending on the region. Our AMF also includes local information on relative vertical profiles (shape factors) of NO 2 from a global 3‐D…

• SI
  Smithsonian Institution
• NA
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration