TROPOMI unravels transboundary transport pathways of atmospheric carbon monoxide in Tibetan Plateau.

Numerous studies have reported in situ monitoring and source analysis in the Tibetan Plateau (TP), a region crucial for climate systems. However, a gap remains in understanding the comprehensive distribution of atmospheric pollutants in the TP and their transboundary pollution transport. Here, we analyzed the high-resolution satellite TROPOMI observations from 2018 to 2023 in Tibet and its surrounding areas.

Vast CO release from Australian fires in 2019-2020 constrained by satellite.

Southeast Australia experienced intensive and geographically extensive wildfires during the 2019-2020 summer season. The fires released substantial amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, existing emission estimates based on fire inventories are uncertain, and vary by up to a factor of four for this event.

Daily Satellite Observations of Methane from Oil and Gas Production Regions in the United States.

Production of oil and natural gas in North America is at an all-time high due to the development and use of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Methane emissions associated with this industrial activity are a concern because of the contribution to climate radiative forcing. We present new measurements from the space-based TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) launched in 2017 that show methane enhancements over production regions in the United States.

Satellite observations reveal extreme methane leakage from a natural gas well blowout.

Methane emissions due to accidents in the oil and natural gas sector are very challenging to monitor, and hence are seldom considered in emission inventories and reporting. One of the main reasons is the lack of measurements during such events. Here we report the detection of large methane emissions from a gas well blowout in Ohio during February to March 2018 in the total column methane measurements from the spaceborne Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI).

Global retrievals of solar induced chlorophyll fluorescence with TROPOMI: first results and inter-sensor comparison to OCO-2.

Unlabelled: In recent years, solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) retrieved from space borne spectrometers has been extensively used as a proxy for terrestrial photosynthesis at relatively sparse temporal and spatial scales. The near-infrared band of the recently launched TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) features the required spectral resolution and signal-to-noise ratio to retrieve SIF in a spectral range devoid of atmospheric absorption features. We find that initial TROPOMI spectra meet high expectations for a substantially improved spatio-temporal resolution (up to 7 km × 3.

Bichromatic method for identification of clear-sky scenarios over ground pixel viewed from space.

We propose a method for identifying clear-sky scenarios from a measurement time series over satellite-observed ground pixels of unknown surface albedo and aerosol type. The lack of a general monotonic relationship between aerosol loading and observed reflectance encumbers the ordering of the observation time series according to aerosol loading. This problem is ameliorated by using two wavelengths at which the surface albedos are known to differ.

Retrieval of aerosol properties over land surfaces: capabilities of multiple-viewing-angle intensity and polarization measurements.

We investigate the capabilities of different instrument concepts for the retrieval of aerosol properties over land. It was found that, if the surface reflection properties are unknown, only multiple-viewing-angle measurements of both intensity and polarization are able to provide the relevant aerosol parameters with sufficient accuracy for climate research. Furthermore, retrieval errors are only little affected when the number of viewing angles is increased at the cost of the number of spectral sampling points and vice versa.

Accurate modeling of spectral fine-structure in Earth radiance spectra measured with the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment.

We present what we believe to be a novel approach to simulating the spectral fine structure (<1 nm) in measurements of spectrometers such as the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME). GOME measures the Earth's radiance spectra and daily solar irradiance spectra from which a reflectivity spectrum is commonly extracted. The high-frequency structures contained in such a spectrum are, apart from atmospheric absorption, caused by Raman scattering and by a shift between the solar irradiance and the Earth's radiance spectrum.