Technology of estimating nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide emissions by large industrial centers of Western Siberia

The paper presents results of the development and testing with real data of a technology for assessing the emission of nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide from sources in Western Siberia. The NO2 content in the region’s troposphere was determined using data from the TROPOMI spectroradiometer of the Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite. The method of computational experiments to obtain quantitative estimates of CO2 emissions from large industrial facilities in the region consists in a joint analysis of data from TROPOMI/Sentinel-5P for the NO2 content and data from the OCO-2 orbiting carbon observatory for the CO2 content. The main procedure for data analysis is the approximation of gas content distributions along the trajectory of the OCO-2 satellite by the vector function of the Gaussian distribution. Approximation parameters (full width at half maximum and amplitude), as well as data about direction and speed of wind (obtained from the ERA5 reanalysis) are used to quantify CO2 emissions. The technology developed by the authors for obtaining quantitative estimates of anthropogenic CO2 emissions for the industrial centers of Western Siberia without using OCO-2 data is based on an empirically established relationship between approximation parameters of gases distributions. The results of the work are quantitative estimates of the content of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere and lower troposphere of Western Siberia; the annual cycle and interannual variability of NO2 in the troposphere, obtained using data from the TROPOMI/Sentinel-5P spectroradiometer; a technology for obtaining quantitative estimates of CO2 emissions from large industrial centers of the region.