Emission inventory

TROPOMI-based global VOC emissions

Satellite-derived VOC emission estimates based on TROPOMI HCHO and CHOCHO columns


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Top-down global VOC emission distributions in 2021 (in 1010 molecules cm-2 s-1) with total global emissions in TgVOC for (i) isoprene, (ii) anthropogenic VOC glyoxal precursors, (iii) anthropogenic VOC non-glyoxal precursors, (iv) biomass burning VOC, and (v) unspecified VOC glyoxal precursor.

TDemissions GLANCEdataset

About the data

The top-down emissions are inferred from an inverse modelling scheme built on the chemistry-transport model MAGRITTEv1.2 and its adjoint (Müller et al., 2019; Bauwens et al., 2016; Müller and Stavrakou, 2005), constrained by TROPOMI HCHO (De Smedt et al., 2018) and CHOCHO (Lerot et al., 2021) column data through a two-compound inversion framework.

The chemical mechanism of MAGRITTEv1.1 (Müller et al., 2019) already included the oxidation of six glyoxal precursors: isoprene (C5H8), acetylene (C2H2), and ethene (C2H4), and the common BTX aromatics benzene (C6H6), toluene (C7H8) and xylenes (C8H10). The new mechanism in MAGRITTEv1.2 includes the following additional aromatics: trimethylbenzene (C9H12), styrene (C8H8), ethylbenzene (C8H10), phenol (C6H6O), cresol (C7H8O), catechols (C6H6O2) and methylcatechols (C7H8O2), benzaldehyde (C7H6O), (methyl-) perbenzoic acid (C7H6O3), methylperoxybenzoylnitrate (C7H5O5N), nitrophenols and nitrocatechols (C6H5O3N), generic C4 and C5 intermediates (C4H4O2 and C5H6O2).

More details can be found in the companion paper of Sfendla et al (in preparation).

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Global, monthly emissions are available in NetCDF format at a resolution of 2°x2.5°.

Technical information is available in this readme file.

2021
 

Cite this as (APA format)

Sfendla, Y., Stavrakou, T., Müller, J.-F., & Opacka, B. (2025). 2021 Global top-down VOC emissions based on TROPOMI formaldehyde and glyoxal data (Version 1) [Data set]. Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy. https://doi.org/10.18758/52E4U9EN.

Acknowledgements

The development of this dataset was made possible thanks to the support of the European Space Agency (ESA) through the GLANCE (Glyoxal Atmospheric sources revealed using novel column satellite observations and aircraft data, 2023) and the GLYRETRO (GLYoxal Retrievals from TROPOMI, 2019-2021) projects. This research was also supported by the EQUATOR project funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) through the BRAIN-be 2.0 programme (grant no. B2/202/P1/EQUATOR, 2021–2025).

References

  • Bauwens, M., Stavrakou, T., Müller, J.-F., De Smedt, I., Van Roozendael, M., van der Werf, G. R., Wiedinmyer, C., Kaiser, J., Sindelarova, K., and Guenther, A.: Nine years of global hydrocarbon emissions based on source inversion of OMI formaldehyde observations, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 10133-10158, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-10133-2016, 2016.

  • De Smedt, I., Theys, N., Yu, H., Danckaert, T., Lerot, C., Compernolle, S., Van Roozendael, M., Richter, A., Hilboll, A., Peters, E., Pedergnana, M., Loyola, D., Beirle, S., Wagner, T., Eskes, H., van Geffen, J., Boersma, K. F., and Veefkind, P.: Algorithm theoretical baseline for formaldehyde retrievals from S5P TROPOMI and from the QA4ECV project, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 11, 2395–2426, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-11-2395-2018, 2018.

  • Lerot, C., Hendrick, F., Van Roozendael, M., Alvarado, L. M. A., Richter, A., De Smedt, I., Theys, N., Vlietinck, J., Yu, H., Van Gent, J., Stavrakou, T., Müller, J.-F., Valks, P., Loyola, D., Irie, H., Kumar, V., Wagner, T., Schreier, S. F., Sinha, V., Wang, T., Wang, P., and Retscher, C.: Glyoxal tropospheric column retrievals from TROPOMI – multi-satellite intercomparison and ground-based validation, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 14, 7775–7807, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-7775-2021, 2021.

  • Müller, J.-F., T. Stavrakou, and J. Peeters: Chemistry and deposition in the Model of Atmospheric composition at Global and Regional scales using Inversion Techniques for Trace Gas Emissions (MAGRITTE v1.1). Part A. Chemical mechanism, Geosci. Model Dev., 12, 2307-2356, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-2307-2019, 2019.

  • Müller, J.-F., and T. Stavrakou: Inversion of CO and NOx emissions using the adjoint of the IMAGES model, Atmos. Chem. Phys. 5, 1157-1186, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-5-1157-2005, 2005.

  • Sfendla, Y., T. Stavrakou, J.-F. Müller, G.-M. Oomen, B. Opacka, I. De Smedt: Global VOC emissions estimated using adjoint inversion of spaceborne formaldehyde and glyoxal data from the TROPOMI instrument, in preparation.