Global sources and sinks of OCS and CS₂and their distributions

Abstract

This study investigates the distribution and magnitudes of the global sources and sinks of OCS and CS2. From an analysis of the correlations between measured emission rates and environmental parameters, the sources of OCS and CS2 are estimated to be 1.23 (0.83−1.71) Tg(OCS) yr−1 and 0.57 (0.34−0.82) Tg(CS2) yr−1, respectively. Our results indicate that 30% of the atmospheric OCS source is derived from the oxidation of CS2, while emissions from the ocean and other natural terrestrial sources contribute 28% and 24%, respectively. In the case of CS2, the major source is from chemical industrial emissions (58%) while the ocean contributes about 34% to the total CS2 source. Our estimate of the OCS and CS2 emission rates suggests that anthropogenic activities contribute approximately 32% to the total OCS source. The major sink for CS2 is oxidation by tropospheric OH, whereas, that for OCS appears to be uptake by vegetation.

Characteristics and anthropogenic sources of carbonyl sulfide in Beijing

“…The similarity in COS mixing ratios in most areas indicated that the prevailing monsoon in spring favors even distribution of the species with relatively long residual lifetime. The average COS mixing ratio in summer observed in this study was much lower than the background level (about 500 pptv), indicating strong COS uptake by vegetation (Chin and Davis, 1993;Xu, 2001;Watts, 2000;Campbell et al, 2008), whereas the extremely high levels of COS observed in winter indicated that additional COS emissions made remarkable contributions to atmospheric COS in Beijing.…”

“…e l s e v i e r . c o m / j o u r n a l -o f -e n v i r o n m e n t a l -s c i e n c e s atmospheric COS sinks (Chin and Davis, 1993;Watts, 2000;Kettle et al, 2002;Montzka et al, 2007), and can strongly reduce the COS mixing ratios at ground levels (Campbell et al, 2008).…”

“…Considering the significant effects of atmospheric COS on the climate and environment, considerable attention has been given to the identification of anthropogenic sources. Besides the known natural sources such as the oceans (Ferek and Andreae, 1984;Johnson and Harrison, 1986;Mihalopoulos et al, 1992), volcanoes (Khalil and Rasmussen, 1984;Chin and Davis, 1993), anaerobic soil (Adams et al, 1981;Castro and Galloway, 1991;Chin and Davis, 1993;Kanda et al, 1995), marshes Peterson, 1984, 1985) and precipitation (Mu et al, 2004;Mu and Xu, 2009), approximately 25% of current COS in the atmosphere has been attributed to multifarious human activities (Aydin et al, 2002), including biomass burning (Crutzen et al, 1985;Nguyen et al, 1994), coal-fired power plants (Khalil and Rasmussen, 1984), chemical processing (Khalil and Rasmussen, 1984), aluminum production (Harnisch et al, 1995), sulfur recovery (Khalil and Rasmussen, 1984), and motor vehicles (Fried et al, 1992;Pos and Berresheim, 1993). On the other hand, vegetation uptake of COS is responsible for 50%-70% of atmospheric COS sinks (Chin and Davis, 1993;Watts, 2000;Kettle et al, 2002;Montzka et al, 2007), and can strongly reduce the COS mixing ratios at ground levels (Campbell et al, 2008).…”

“…However, the estimation of global anthropogenic COS sources' strength varies from 0.04 ± 0.02 (Chin and Davis, 1993) to 0.124 ± 0.06 Tg/year (Watts, 2000) due to the small number of investigations of source inventories. Recently, an indirect method has been used for estimation of regional anthropogenic COS emissions based on the linear correlation of COS with CO mixing ratios and the regional CO emission estimates (Blake et al, 2004;Guo et al, 2010).…”

“…e l s e v i e r . c o m / j o u r n a l -o f -e n v i r o n m e n t a l -s c i e n c e s atmospheric COS sinks (Chin and Davis, 1993;Watts, 2000;Kettle et al, 2002;Montzka et al, 2007), and can strongly reduce the COS mixing ratios at ground levels (Campbell et al, 2008).However, the estimation of global anthropogenic COS sources' strength varies from 0.04 ± 0.02 (Chin and Davis, 1993) to 0.124 ± 0.06 Tg/year (Watts, 2000) due to the small number of investigations of source inventories. Recently, an indirect method has been used for estimation of regional anthropogenic COS emissions based on the linear correlation of COS with CO mixing ratios and the regional CO emission estimates (Blake et al, 2004;Guo et al, 2010).…”