Emissions from the Canadian oil sands: Merging aircraft and satellite observations to derive emissions of pollutants co-emitted with NOx
- 1Environment and Climate Change Canada, Toronto, Canada
- 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
- 3Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
- 4Laboratory for Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States of America
The Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) in Alberta, Canada is one of the largest sources of extractable oil in the world. To better understand its impact, Environment and Climate Change Canada led two intensive measurement campaigns, in 2013 (August to September) and 2018 (April to July). Each included airborne measurements in which dozens of species were measured using a variety of in situ instruments. In this presentation, a method is described in which these aircraft measurements were examined to find species that were well correlated with NOx (the sum of NO and NO2) in order to derive their annual emissions. The species found to have a good correlation with NOx were black carbon, CO, HCN, HONO, CH4, and SO2. The annual emissions were found by applying individual species to NOx ratios to the satellite-derived NOx emissions from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI). The emissions derived in this way were compared with emissions reported to the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI), as well as emissions derived from the aircraft measurements using the Top-down Emission Rate Retrieval Algorithm (TERRA). Additionally, Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) NOx emissions were used to estimate historical changes in species emissions over time, between 2005 and 2020.
How to cite: Moser, S., Griffin, D., Wren, S., McLinden, C., Liggio, J., Wheeler, M., Wentzell, J. J. B., Mittermeier, R., Hayden, K., Darlington, A., Leithead, A., and Krotkov, N.: Emissions from the Canadian oil sands: Merging aircraft and satellite observations to derive emissions of pollutants co-emitted with NOx, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-10274, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-10274, 2021.
