1.
Tegtmeier, S., et al.
(författare)
SPARC Data Initiative: A comparison of ozone climatologies from international satellite limb sounders
2013
Ingår i: Journal of Geophysical Research. - 0148-0227 .- 2156-2202. ; 118:21, s. 12229-12247
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
A comprehensive quality assessment of the ozone products from 18 limb-viewing satellite instruments is provided by means of a detailed intercomparison. The ozone climatologies in form of monthly zonal mean time series covering the upper troposphere to lower mesosphere are obtained from LIMS, SAGE I/II/III, UARS-MLS, HALOE, POAM II/III, SMR, OSIRIS, MIPAS, GOMOS, SCIAMACHY, ACE-FTS, ACE-MAESTRO, Aura-MLS, HIRDLS, and SMILES within 1978–2010. The intercomparisons focus on mean biases of annual zonal mean fields, interannual variability, and seasonal cycles. Additionally, the physical consistency of the data is tested through diagnostics of the quasi-biennial oscillation and Antarctic ozone hole. The comprehensive evaluations reveal that the uncertainty in our knowledge of the atmospheric ozone mean state is smallest in the tropical and midlatitude middle stratosphere with a 1σ multi-instrument spread of less than ±5%. While the overall agreement among the climatological data sets is very good for large parts of the stratosphere, individual discrepancies have been identified, including unrealistic month-to-month fluctuations, large biases in particular atmospheric regions, or inconsistencies in the seasonal cycle. Notable differences between the data sets exist in the tropical lower stratosphere (with a spread of ±30%) and at high latitudes (±15%). In particular, large relative differences are identified in the Antarctic during the time of the ozone hole, with a spread between the monthly zonal mean fields of ±50%. The evaluations provide guidance on what data sets are the most reliable for applications such as studies of ozone variability, model-measurement comparisons, detection of long-term trends, and data-merging activities.
2.
Toohey, M., et al.
(författare)
Characterizing sampling biases in the trace gas climatologies of the SPARC Data Initiative
2013
Ingår i: Journal of Geophysical Research. - : American Geophysical Union (AGU). - 0148-0227 .- 2156-2202 .- 2169-897X .- 2169-8996. ; 118:20, s. 11847-11862
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Monthly zonal mean climatologies of atmospheric measurements from satellite instruments can have biases due to the nonuniform sampling of the atmosphere by the instruments. We characterize potential sampling biases in stratospheric trace gas climatologies of the Stratospheric Processes and Their Role in Climate (SPARC) Data Initiative using chemical fields from a chemistry climate model simulation and sampling patterns from 16 satellite-borne instruments. The exercise is performed for the long-lived stratospheric trace gases O3 and H2O. Monthly sampling biases for O3 exceed 10% for many instruments in the high-latitude stratosphere and in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere, while annual mean sampling biases reach values of up to 20% in the same regions for some instruments. Sampling biases for H2O are generally smaller than for O3, although still notable in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere and Southern Hemisphere high latitudes. The most important mechanism leading to monthly sampling bias is nonuniform temporal sampling, i.e., the fact that for many instruments, monthly means are produced from measurements which span less than the full month in question. Similarly, annual mean sampling biases are well explained by nonuniformity in the month-to-month sampling by different instruments. Nonuniform sampling in latitude and longitude are shown to also lead to nonnegligible sampling biases, which are most relevant for climatologies which are otherwise free of biases due to nonuniform temporal sampling.
3.
Mellqvist, Johan, 1965, et al.
(författare)
Mobile optical measurements of emissions and fenceline concentrations from oil and gas production
2019
Ingår i: AQM 2019 - Air Quality Measurement Methods and Technology Conference 2019.
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat) abstract
The mobile measurement platform and optical methods used in the SQAMD project1 allowed for mapping concentrations and measuring fluxes from a large number of sources and source types, and provided very useful information on the relative contribution of small stationary sources to alkane and BTEX emissions in the SCAB. Sources ranged from single oil wells to large tank farms, refineries, and off shore installations. Note that these sources are not subjected to the same regulatory requirements as larger industrial facilities. Future studies aimed at improving the emission estimates in SCAB should include a larger subset of units from all major source categories, and a better characterization of their spatial and temporal variability.
4.
Brohede, Samuel, 1977
(författare)
Satellite Limb-Scatter Observations of Stratospheric NO2 and O3 -Retrievals, Validation and Applications
2008
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Global observations of vertically resolved atmospheric constituents with high temporal and spatial sampling are crucial for various scientific assessments of ozone depletion and climate change. This thesis explains how such data can be retrieved from satellite limb-scatter observations. The main focus is stratospheric NO2 and O3 measured by the the Optical Spectrograph and Infra-Red Imager System (OSIRIS) aboard the Swedish satellite Odin, although the principles can be used for any similar instrument, for other gases and atmospheric regions. The entire process from detector photon counts to a validated operational data product is covered.Transformations of observed radiances to effective column densities for NO2 and Chappuis triplets for O3 in combination with a normalization, significantly reduces the sensitivity to aerosol, clouds, instrument effects and absolute calibration. A maximum a posteriori inversion method produces well behaved data and provides estimates of measurement uncertainty and vertical resolution for individual profiles. Credible data are generally found between 12 and 42 km with a vertical resolution of around 2 km and random uncertainties of about 5\% for O3 and 10\% for NO2. External comparisons reveal good agreement between 25 and 35 km and long-term stability. Sensitivity studies identify four major concerns; stray light contamination, inaccurate pointing, atmospheric inhomogeneities and clouds.Applications of OSIRIS data and the construction of global climatologies of NO2, O3 and NOy are also presented together with model comparisons which indicate inaccurate simulations of heterogeneous nitrogen processes.
5.
Haley, C. S., et al.
(författare)
Status of the Odin/OSIRIS stratospheric O3 and NO2 data products
2007
Ingår i: Canadian Journal of Physics. - 0008-4204 .- 1208-6045. ; 85:11, s. 1177-1194
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
This paper describes the status of the stratospheric ozone and nitrogen dioxide data products from the Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imager System (OSIRIS) instrument on the Odin satellite. The current version of the data products is 3.0, covering the period from November 2001 to the present. The O3 and NO2 retrieval methods are reviewed along with an overview of the error analyses and geophysical validation status.
6.
Mellqvist, Johan, 1965, et al.
(författare)
Methane emissions from industrial activities using drones
2023
Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt) abstract
Innovative drone-based methods have been developed to map and quantify methane leakages from various industrial activities, such as refineries, Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) terminals, landfills, and water treatment facilities. These methods use a high-speed, high-sensitivity laser sensor and were validated through controlled gas releases. They were also compared to a ground-based infrared absorption-based technique. This initiative is supported by the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (Vinnova) and aligns with UN Sustainable Development Goals 9, 11, and 13. The goal is to reduce methane emissions significantly, aiding Sweden in achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. Accurate measurements enable effective, targeted, and trackable measures to minimize emissions, resulting in a rapid positive climate impact. The project has led to the development of two distinct drone-based methods: the wall approach and the tracer approach. The wall approach measures gas concentrations across the entire cross-section of the plume, whereas the tracer approach measures the ratio of leaking gas to source gas. Depending on the source's size, one approach may be preferred over the other, with the tracer method being more suitable for point sources and the wall approach for larger sources. The custom-designed drone in this project, provided and operated by Gerdes Solution. is equipped with a high-sensitivity laser sensor and has a flight duration of about 12 minutes while carrying a 3 kg payload. This limitation presents a challenge when conducting wall measurements, which require approximately 25 minutes of flight time for the studied sources. Due to the drone's limited flight time, it necessitates landing and battery replacement, which complicates the process and limits the number of repeat measurements. In future endeavors, employing a drone with a longer flight duration would be advantageous. In total, the study detected about 220 kg/h of methane emissions and 3 kg/h of nitrous oxide emissions, equivalent to an emission rate of about 7 tons/h of carbon dioxide. The emissions were dominated by the water treatment plant and landfills, with relatively little coming from the refinery and LNG plant. However, the wall measurements in thus study serve as demonstrations of how the technique can be used and do not provide a comprehensive picture of the actual emissions from the individual sites; this would require more statistical data in terms of repeat measurements and measurement days. It is shown that drone measurements using the new high sensitivity laser is a valuable tool for mapping methane concentrations from various types of industrial sources, which are challenging to investigate today due to diffuse emissions, large dimensions, and complex geometries. The validation studies show that both the wall approach and controlled tracer releases can be used to quantify emissions, achieving an accuracy of up to 10 % for a simple, single, source. However, in the real measurement situation, the wall approach may be difficult to execute due to practical challenges like flying restrictions and the need for spatially dense data that can be interpolated to a homogenous grid and repeated measurements. In several cases, when the drone had to fly relatively close to the plumes, downwind of large buildings in complex and turbulent wind fields, the wall approach yielded large variability in the resulting flux. It is hence evident that the wall approach requires a thorough understanding of the measurement situation, and that repeated measurements are needed, at different distances from the source and in varying wind directions. The tracer approach was therefore preferred choice for obtaining emission rates in this study, although it is challenging to carry out representative tracer releases for larger sources and for cases when the measurements are performed near to the source, and in this case the wall approach is preferred. It was also shown that the drone-based tracer approach is advantageous to the ground based since it is then easier to capture the full plume.
7.
Adams, C., et al.
(författare)
Validation of ACE and OSIRIS ozone and NO2 measurements using ground-based instruments at 80 degrees N
2012
Ingår i: Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1867-1381 .- 1867-8548. ; 5:5, s. 927-953
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
The Optical Spectrograph and Infra-Red Imager System (OSIRIS) and the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) have been taking measurements from space since 2001 and 2003, respectively. This paper presents intercomparisons between ozone and NO2 measured by the ACE and OSIRIS satellite instruments and by ground-based instruments at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), which is located at Eureka, Canada (80A degrees N, 86A degrees W) and is operated by the Canadian Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Change (CANDAC). The ground-based instruments included in this study are four zenith-sky differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS) instruments, one Bruker Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR) and four Brewer spectrophotometers. Ozone total columns measured by the DOAS instruments were retrieved using new Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC) guidelines and agree to within 3.2%. The DOAS ozone columns agree with the Brewer spectrophotometers with mean relative differences that are smaller than 1.5%. This suggests that for these instruments the new NDACC data guidelines were successful in producing a homogenous and accurate ozone dataset at 80A degrees N. Satellite 14-52 km ozone and 17-40 km NO2 partial columns within 500 km of PEARL were calculated for ACE-FTS Version 2.2 (v2.2) plus updates, ACE-FTS v3.0, ACE-MAESTRO (Measurements of Aerosol Extinction in the Stratosphere and Troposphere Retrieved by Occultation) v1.2 and OSIRIS SaskMART v5.0x ozone and Optimal Estimation v3.0 NO2 data products. The new ACE-FTS v3.0 and the validated ACE-FTS v2.2 partial columns are nearly identical, with mean relative differences of 0.0 +/- 0.2% and -0.2 +/- 0.1% for v2.2 minus v3.0 ozone and NO2, respectively. Ozone columns were constructed from 14-52 km satellite and 0-14 km ozonesonde partial columns and compared with the ground-based total column measurements. The satellite-plus-sonde measurements agree with the ground-based ozone total columns with mean relative differences of 0.1-7.3%. For NO2, partial columns from 17 km upward were scaled to noon using a photochemical model. Mean relative differences between OSIRIS, ACE-FTS and ground-based NO2 measurements do not exceed 20%. ACE-MAESTRO measures more NO2 than the other instruments, with mean relative differences of 25-52%. Seasonal variation in the differences between NO2 partial columns is observed, suggesting that there are systematic errors in the measurements and/or the photochemical model corrections. For ozone spring-time measurements, additional coincidence criteria based on stratospheric temperature and the location of the polar vortex were found to improve agreement between some of the instruments. For ACE-FTS v2.2 minus Bruker FTIR, the 2007-2009 spring-time mean relative difference improved from -5.0 +/- 0.4% to -3.1 +/- 0.8% with the dynamical selection criteria. This was the largest improvement, likely because both instruments measure direct sunlight and therefore have well-characterized lines-of-sight compared with scattered sunlight measurements. For NO2, the addition of a +/- 1A degrees latitude coincidence criterion improved spring-time intercomparison results, likely due to the sharp latitudinal gradient of NO2 during polar sunrise. The differences between satellite and ground-based measurements do not show any obvious trends over the missions, indicating that both the ACE and OSIRIS instruments continue to perform well.
8.
Angelbratt, Jon, 1981, et al.
(författare)
A new method to detect long term trends of methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) total columns measured within the NDACC ground-based high resolution solar FTIR network
2011
Ingår i: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1680-7316 .- 1680-7324. ; 11:13, s. 6167-6183
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
Total columns measured with the ground-based solar FTIR technique are highly variable in time due to atmospheric chemistry and dynamics in the atmosphere above the measurement station. In this paper, a multiple regression model with anomalies of air pressure, total columns of hydrogen fluoride (HF) and carbon monoxide (CO) and tropopause height are used to reduce the variability in the methane (CH(4)) and nitrous oxide (N(2)O) total columns to estimate reliable linear trends with as small uncertainties as possible. The method is developed at the Harestua station (60 degrees N, 11 degrees E, 600 ma.s.l.) and used on three other European FTIR stations, i.e. Jungfraujoch (47 degrees N, 8 degrees E, 3600 ma.s.l.), Zugspitze (47 degrees N, 11 degrees E, 3000 ma.s.l.), and Kiruna (68 degrees N, 20 degrees E, 400 ma.s.l.). Linear CH(4) trends between 0.13 +/- 0.01-0.25 +/- 0.02% yr(-1) were estimated for all stations in the 1996-2009 period. A piecewise model with three separate linear trends, connected at change points, was used to estimate the short term fluctuations in the CH(4) total columns. This model shows a growth in 1996-1999 followed by a period of steady state until 2007. From 2007 until 2009 the atmospheric CH(4) amount increases between 0.57 +/- 0.22-1.15 +/- 0.17% yr(-1). Linear N(2)O trends between 0.19 +/- 0.01-0.40 +/- 0.02% yr(-1) were estimated for all stations in the 1996-2007 period, here with the strongest trend at Harestua and Kiruna and the lowest at the Alp stations. From the N(2)O total columns crude tropospheric and stratospheric partial columns were derived, indicating that the observed difference in the N(2)O trends between the FTIR sites is of stratospheric origin. This agrees well with the N(2)O measurements by the SMR instrument onboard the Odin satellite showing the highest trends at Harestua, 0.98 +/- 0.28% yr(-1), and considerably smaller trends at lower latitudes, 0.27 +/- 0.25% yr(-1). The multiple regression model was compared with two other trend methods, the ordinary linear regression and a Bootstrap algorithm. The multiple regression model estimated CH(4) and N(2)O trends that differed up to 31% compared to the other two methods and had uncertainties that were up to 300% lower. Since the multiple regression method were carefully validated this stresses the importance to account for variability in the total columns when estimating trend from solar FTIR data.
9.
Bourassa, A. E., et al.
(författare)
Fast NO2 retrievals from Odin-OSIRIS limb scatter measurements
2011
Ingår i: Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1867-1381 .- 1867-8548. ; 4:5, s. 965-972
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
The feasibility of retrieving vertical profiles of NO2 from space-based measurements of limb scattered sunlight has been demonstrated using several different data sets since the 1980's. The NO2 data product routinely retrieved from measurements made by the Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imaging System (OSIRIS) instrument onboard the Odin satellite uses a spectral fitting technique over the 437 to 451 nm range, over which there are 36 individual wavelength measurements. In this work we present a proof of concept technique for the retrieval of NO2 using only 4 of the 36 OSIRIS measurements in this wavelength range, which reduces the computational cost by almost an order of magnitude. The method is an adaptation of a triplet analysis technique that is currently used for the OSIRIS retrievals of ozone at Chappuis band wavelengths. The results obtained are shown to be in very good agreement with the spectral fit method, and provide an important alternative for applications where the computational burden is very high. Additionally this provides a baseline for future instrument design in terms of cost effectiveness and reducing spectral range requirements.
10.
Brohede, Samuel, 1977, et al.
(författare)
A stratospheric NO2 climatology from Odin/OSIRIS limb-scatter measurements
2007
Ingår i: Canadian Journal of Physics. - 0008-4204 .- 1208-6045. ; 85:11, s. 1253-1274
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat) abstract
A climatology of stratospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2), in terms of mean and standard deviation, as a function of latitude (5° bins); altitude (10–46 km in 2 km bins); local solar time (24 h); and month is constructed based on the Odin/OSIRIS limb-scattering data from 2002–2005. The measured profiles, given at specific local solar times, are scaled to all 24 h using a photochemical box model. The Odin orbit gives near global coverage around the equinoxes and hemispheric coverage elsewhere, due to lack of sunlight. The mean NO2 field at a specific local solar time involves high concentrations in the polar summer, peaking at around 25 km, with a negative equatorward gradient. Distinct high levels between 40–50° latitude at 30 km in the winter/spring hemisphere are also found, associated with the so-called {Noxon-cliff}. The diurnal cycle reveals the lowest NO2 concentrations just after sunrise and steep gradients at twilight. The 1σ standard deviation is generally quite low, around 20%, except for winter and spring high latitudes, where values are well above 50% and stretch through the entire stratosphere, a phenomenon probably related to the polar vortex. It is also found that NO2 concentrations are log-normally distributed. Comparisons to a climatology based on data from a (REPROBUS) chemical transport model for the same time period reveal relative differences below 20% in general, which is comparable to the estimated OSIRIS systematic uncertainty. Clear exceptions are the polar regions in winter/spring throughout the atmosphere and equatorial regions below 25 km, where OSIRIS is relatively higher by 40% and more. These discrepancies are most likely attributable to limitations of the model, but this has to be investigated further.
