Abstract. Atmospheric remote sounding from satellites is an essential component of the observational strategy deployed to monitor atmospheric pollution and changing composition. The IASI nadir looking thermal infrared sounder onboard MetOp will provide 15 years of global scale observations for a series of key atmospheric species, with unprecedented spatial sampling and coverage. This paper gives an overview of the instrument's capability for measuring atmospheric composition in the perspective of chemistry and air quality. The assessment is made in terms of species, accuracy and vertical information. Global distributions are presented for CO, CH 4 , O 3 (total and tropospheric), HNO 3 , NH 3 , and volcanic SO 2 . Local distributions of organic species measured during fire events, such as C 2 H 4 , CH 3 OH, HCOOH, and PAN are also shown. For each species or process, the link is made to specialized papers in this issue.

Abstract. An eight-year long reanalysis of atmospheric composition data covering the period 2003–2010 was constructed as part of the FP7-funded Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate project by assimilating satellite data into a global model and data assimilation system. This reanalysis provides fields of chemically reactive gases, namely carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen oxides, and formaldehyde, as well as aerosols and greenhouse gases globally at a horizontal resolution of about 80 km for both the troposphere and the stratosphere. This paper describes the assimilation system for the reactive gases and presents validation results for the reactive gas analysis fields to document the data set and to give a first indication of its quality. Tropospheric CO values from the MACC reanalysis are on average 10–20% lower than routine observations from commercial aircrafts over airports through most of the troposphere, and have larger negative biases in the boundary layer at urban sites affected by air pollution, possibly due to an underestimation of CO or precursor emissions. Stratospheric ozone fields from the MACC reanalysis agree with ozonesondes and ACE-FTS data to within ±10% in most seasons and regions. In the troposphere the reanalysis shows biases of −5% to +10% with respect to ozonesondes and aircraft data in the extratropics, but has larger negative biases in the tropics. Area-averaged total column ozone agrees with ozone fields from a multi-sensor reanalysis data set to within a few percent. NO2 fields from the reanalysis show the right seasonality over polluted urban areas of the NH and over tropical biomass burning areas, but underestimate wintertime NO2 maxima over anthropogenic pollution regions and overestimate NO2 in northern and southern Africa during the tropical biomass burning seasons. Tropospheric HCHO is well simulated in the MACC reanalysis even though no satellite data are assimilated. It shows good agreement with independent SCIAMACHY retrievals over regions dominated by biogenic emissions with some anthropogenic input, such as the eastern US and China, and also over African regions influenced by biogenic sources and biomass burning.

Through its important role in the formation of particulate matter, atmospheric ammonia affects air quality and has implications for human health and life expectancy 1,2. Excess ammonia in the environment also contributes to the acidification and eutrophication of ecosystems 3-5 and to climate change 6. Anthropogenic emissions dominate natural ones and mostly originate from agricultural, domestic and industrial activities 7. However, the total ammonia budget and the attribution of emissions to specific sources remain highly uncertain across different spatial scales 7-9. Here we identify, categorize and quantify the world's ammonia emission hotspots using a high-resolution map of atmospheric ammonia obtained from almost a decade of daily IASI satellite observations. We report 248 hotspots with diameters smaller than 50 kilometres, which we associate with either a single point source or a cluster of agricultural and industrial point sources-with the exception of one hotspot, which can be traced back to a natural source. The state-of-the-art EDGAR emission inventory 10 mostly agrees with satellitederived emission fluxes within a factor of three for larger regions. However, it does not adequately represent the majority of point sources that we identified and underestimates the emissions of two-thirds of them by at least one order of magnitude. Industrial emitters in particular are often found to be displaced or missing. Our results suggest that it is necessary to completely revisit the emission inventories of anthropogenic ammonia sources and to account for the rapid evolution of such sources over time. This will lead to better health and environmental impact assessments of atmospheric ammonia and the implementation of suitable nitrogen management strategies. Considerable effort goes into establishing spatially and temporally resolved ammonia (NH 3) bottom-up emission inventories, as these are critical drivers of models that are used to assess NH 3 distributions and impacts on the environment. Bottom-up inventories are built from activity data coupled with estimated emission factors. The correctness of these input data is their Achilles' heel, as activity data can be absent or outdated and estimated emission factors are based on specific case studies and may not be representative of either local or global conditions 11,12. When they are available, global measured atmospheric distributions of trace gas concentrations allow us to retrieve source emissions. In the past few years, satellite sounders have offered (bi) daily global NH 3 measurements 13-17 , which have a huge potential to improve our knowledge of the NH 3 emission budget 18. The first global distributions 13 and inverse modelling efforts 19 have confirmed the correctness of the location of the large source regions in the inventories, but have also revealed likely underestimates in the magnitude of their emissions, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. A regional study 20 has highlighted the advantage of averaging data to reveal smaller, localized NH 3 point...

Abstract. The Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) onboard the MetOp satellite measures carbon monoxide (CO) on a global scale, twice a day. CO total columns and vertical profiles are retrieved in near real time from the nadir radiance spectra measured by the instrument in the thermal infrared (TIR) spectral range. This paper describes the measurement vertical sensitivity and provides a first assessment of the capabilities of IASI to measure CO distributions. On the global scale, 0.8 to 2.4 independent pieces of information are available for the retrieval. At mid latitudes, the information ranges between 1.5 and 2, which enables the lower and upper troposphere to be distinguished, especially when thermal contrast is significant. Northern Hemisphere and in the equatorial region. However when strong CO concentrations are present, such as during fire events, these discrepancies can climb as high as 17%. Instrument specifications of IASI versus other missions are also discussed.

In this paper, we describe a new flexible and robust NH3 retrieval algorithm from measurements of the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI). The method is based on the calculation of a spectral hyperspectral range index (HRI) and subsequent conversion to NH3 columns via a neural network. It is an extension of the method presented in Van Damme et al. (2014a) who used lookup tables (LUT) for the radiance‐concentration conversion. The new method inherits the advantages of the LUT‐based method while providing several significant improvements. These include the following: (1) Complete temperature and humidity vertical profiles can be accounted for. (2) Third‐party NH3 vertical profile information can be used. (3) Reported positive biases of LUT retrieval are reduced, and finally (4) a full measurement uncertainty characterization is provided. A running theme in this study, related to item (2), is the importance of the assumed vertical NH3 profile. We demonstrate the advantages of allowing variable profile shapes in the retrieval. As an example, we analyze how the retrievals change when all NH3 is assumed to be confined to the boundary layer. We analyze different averaging procedures in use for NH3 in the literature, introduced to cope with the variable measurement sensitivity and derive global averaged distributions for the year 2013. A comparison with a GEOS‐Chem modeled global distribution is also presented, showing a general good correspondence (within ±3 × 1015 molecules.cm−2) over most of the Northern Hemisphere. However, IASI finds mean columns about 1–1.5 × 1016 molecules.cm−2 (∼50–60%) lower than GEOS‐Chem for India and the North China plain.

Abstract. Thermal infrared sounding of sulphur dioxide (SO 2 ) from space has gained appreciation as a valuable complement to ultraviolet sounding. There are several strong absorption bands of SO 2 in the infrared, and atmospheric sounders, such as AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder), TES (Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer) and IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) have the ability to globally monitor SO 2 abundances. Most of the observed SO 2 is found in volcanic plumes. In this paper we outline a novel algorithm for the sounding of SO 2 above ∼5 km altitude using high resolution infrared sounders and apply it to measurements of IASI. The main features of the algorithm are a wide applicable total column range (over 4 orders of magnitude, from 0.5 to 5000 dobson units), a low theoretical uncertainty (3-5 %) and near real time applicability. We make an error analysis and demonstrate the algorithm on the recent eruptions of Sarychev, Kasatochi, Grimsvötn, Puyehue-Cordón Caulle and Nabro.

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Abstract. Atmospheric remote sensing from satellite is an essential component of the observational strategy deployed to monitor atmospheric pollution and changing composition. The IASI nadir looking thermal infrared sounder onboard MetOp will provide 15 years of global scale observations for a series of key atmospheric species, with unprecedented spatial sampling and coverage. This paper gives an overview of the instrument's capability for measuring atmospheric composition in the perspective of chemistry and air quality studies. The assessment is made in terms of species, accuracy and vertical information. Global distributions are presented for CO, CH4, O3 (total and tropospheric), HNO3, NH3 and volcanic SO2. Local distributions of organic species measured during fire events, such as C2H4, CH3OH, HCOOH, and PAN are also shown. For each species or process, the link is made to specialized papers in this issue.