Increased atmospheric ammonia over the world's major agricultural areas detected from space

Warner, J. X.; Dickerson, Russell R.; Wei, Zigang; Strow, L. Larrabee; Wang, Y.; Liang, Qing

doi:10.1002/2016gl072305

Cited by 332 publications

(285 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…We summarize in Table 1 (Xu et al, 2016;Kang et al, 2016), consistent with trends in atmospheric NH 3 concentration observed from satellites (Warner et al, 2017;Fu et al, 2017). Fertilizer application and livestock waste are the two largest NH 3 sources, together accounting for more than 82 % of the total anthropogenic emissions over China (Table 1).…”

Section: Previous Bottom-up Estimates Of Chinese Nh 3 Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 52%

“…Satellite observations of atmospheric NH 3 concentration have been emerging in recent years. These satellite instruments include the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) (Beer et al, 2008;Shephard et al, 2011), the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) (Clarisse et al, 2009;Van Damme et al, 2015), the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) (Warner et al, 2016(Warner et al, , 2017, and the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) , providing increasingly rich datasets to understand the spatial and temporal variability of NH 3 in the atmosphere.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Agricultural ammonia emissions in China: reconciling bottom-up and top-down estimates

et al. 2018

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Abstract. Current estimates of agricultural ammonia (NH 3 ) emissions in China differ by more than a factor of 2, hindering our understanding of their environmental consequences. Here we apply both bottom-up statistical and top-down inversion methods to quantify NH 3 emissions from agriculture in China for the year 2008. We first assimilate satellite observations of NH 3 column concentration from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) using the GEOS-Chem adjoint model to optimize Chinese anthropogenic NH 3 emissions at the 1/2 • × 2/3 • horizontal resolution for MarchOctober 2008. Optimized emissions show a strong summer peak, with emissions about 50 % higher in summer than spring and fall, which is underestimated in current bottom-up NH 3 emission estimates. To reconcile the latter with the topdown results, we revisit the processes of agricultural NH 3 emissions and develop an improved bottom-up inventory of Chinese NH 3 emissions from fertilizer application and livestock waste at the 1/2 • × 2/3 • resolution. Our bottom-up emission inventory includes more detailed information on crop-specific fertilizer application practices and better accounts for meteorological modulation of NH 3 emission factors in China. We find that annual anthropogenic NH 3 emissions are 11.7 Tg for 2008, with 5.05 Tg from fertilizer application and 5.31 Tg from livestock waste. The two sources together account for 88 % of total anthropogenic NH 3 emissions in China. Our bottom-up emission estimates also show a distinct seasonality peaking in summer, consistent with topdown results from the satellite-based inversion. Further evaluations using surface network measurements show that the model driven by our bottom-up emissions reproduces the observed spatial and seasonal variations of NH 3 gas concentrations and ammonium (NH + 4 ) wet deposition fluxes over China well, providing additional credibility to the improvements we have made to our agricultural NH 3 emission inventory.

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Section: Previous Bottom-up Estimates Of Chinese Nh 3 Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 52%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural ammonia emissions in China: reconciling bottom-up and top-down estimates

et al. 2018

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“…For the national distribution captured at a resolution of 2 × 2.5 • , the highest values were observed in the NCP, the entire provinces of Henan and Hubei, and the north of Hunan Province, which shows a high population density and increasing economic expansion, reflecting the slightly different emission characteristics of sulfate and ammonium. Previous studies have concluded that these high regional concentrations were caused by agricultural activities [49][50][51] …”

Section: Evaluation Of Satellite-estimated Chemical Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimation of Satellite-Based SO42− and NH4+ Composition of Ambient Fine Particulate Matter over China Using Chemical Transport Model

Chen

et al. 2017

Remote Sensing

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Abstract:Epidemiologic and health impact studies have examined the chemical composition of ambient PM 2.5 in China but have been constrained by the paucity of long-term ground measurements. Using the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model and satellite-derived PM 2.5 data, sulfate and ammonium levels were estimated over China from 2004 to 2014. A comparison of the satellite-estimated dataset with model simulations based on ground measurements obtained from the literature indicated our results are more accurate. Using satellite-derived PM 2.5 data with a spatial resolution of 0.1 × 0.1 • , we further presented finer satellite-estimated sulfate and ammonium concentrations in anthropogenic polluted regions, including the NCP (the North China Plain), the SCB (the Sichuan Basin) and the PRD (the Pearl River Delta). Linear regression results obtained on a national scale yielded an r value of 0.62, NMB of −35.9%, NME of 48.2%, ARB_50% of 53.68% for sulfate and an r value of 0.63, slope of 0.67, and intercept of 5.14 for ammonium. In typical regions, the satellite-derived dataset was significantly robust. Based on the satellite-derived dataset, the spatial-temporal variation of 11-year annual average satellite-derived SO −0.61%; NH 4 + : −0.21%), large values were mainly concentrated in the NCP and SCB. For regions captured at a finer resolution, the inter-annual variation trends presented a positive trend over the periods 2004-2007 and 2008-2011, followed by a negative trend over the period 2012-2014, and sulfate concentrations varied appreciably. Moreover, the seasonal distributions of the 11-year satellite-derived dataset over China were presented. The distribution of both sulfate and ammonium concentrations exhibited seasonal characteristics, with the seasonal concentrations ranking as follows: winter > summer > autumn > spring. High concentrations of these species were concentrated in the NCP and SCB, originating from coal-fired power plants and agricultural activities, respectively. Efforts to reduce sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) emissions have yielded remarkable results since the government has adopted stricter control measures in recent years. Moreover, ammonia emissions should be controlled while reducing the concentration of sulfur, nitrogen and particulate matter. This study provides an assessment of the population's exposure to certain chemical components.

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“…The ammonia rich plumes from those areas drive most of the nitric acid into the particle phase, 5 resulting in high PM 2.5 concentrations in those regions (Neuman et al, 2003;Baek and Aneja, 2004). Recent studies have also shown that atmospheric ammonia has increased during the last two decades, a trend that is expected to continue as a result of global warming, increasing agricultural activity and intensifying fertilizer use due to growing population Amann et al, 2013;Warner et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling reactive ammonia uptake by secondary organic aerosol in CMAQ: application to continental US

Zhu¹,

Horne²,

Montoya-Aguilera³

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Abstract. Ammonium salts such as ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate constitute an important fraction of the total fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) mass. While the conversion of inorganic gases into particulate phase sulfate, nitrate, and ammonium is now well understood, there is considerable uncertainty over interactions between gas-phase ammonia and secondary organic aerosols (SOA). Observations have confirmed that ammonia can react with carbonyl compounds in SOA, forming nitrogencontaining organic compounds (NOC). This chemistry can reduce gas-phase NH 3 concentration and therefore affect the amount 5 of ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate in particulate matter (PM). In order to investigate the importance of such reactions, a first-order loss rate for ammonia onto SOA was implemented into the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model based on the ammonia uptake coefficients reported in the literature. Simulations over the continental US were performed for the winter and summer of 2011 with a range of uptake coefficients (10 ). Simulation results indicate that a significant reduction in gas-phase ammonia is possible due to its uptake onto SOA; domain-averaged ammonia concentrations 10 decrease by 31.3 % in the winter, and 67.0 % in the summer with the highest uptake coefficient (10). As a result, the concentration of particulate matter is also significantly affected, with a distinct spatial pattern over different seasons. PM concentrations decreased during the winter, largely due to the reduction in ammonium nitrate concentrations. On the other hand, PM concentrations increased during the summer due to increased production of biogenic SOA production resulting from enhanced acid-catalyzed uptake of isoprene-derived epoxides. While ammonia emissions expected to increase in the future, it 15 is important to include NH 3 + SOA chemistry in air quality models.

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Increased atmospheric ammonia over the world's major agricultural areas detected from space

Cited by 332 publications

References 51 publications

Agricultural ammonia emissions in China: reconciling bottom-up and top-down estimates

Agricultural ammonia emissions in China: reconciling bottom-up and top-down estimates

Estimation of Satellite-Based SO42− and NH4+ Composition of Ambient Fine Particulate Matter over China Using Chemical Transport Model

Modeling reactive ammonia uptake by secondary organic aerosol in CMAQ: application to continental US

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