Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Atmospheric Sciences
Daily global methane super-emitter detection and source identification with sub-daily tracking
Published: 2024-02-01
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy
We use the Shortwave Infrared bands of the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) satellite instruments to retrieve atmospheric methane enhancements with 750m resolution. We show that the three VIIRS instruments in orbit uniquely enhance the currently-employed capabilities of tracking methane super-emission events. The VIIRS instrument on Suomi-NPP and the TROPOMI instrument on [...]
Unexpected anthropogenic emission decreases are required to explain recent atmospheric mercury concentration declines
Published: 2024-01-30
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Anthropogenic activities emit ~2000 Mg yr-1 of the toxic pollutant mercury (Hg) into the atmosphere, leading to long-range transport and deposition to remote ecosystems. Global anthropogenic emissions inventories report increases in Northern Hemispheric (NH) Hg emissions during the last three decades, in contradiction with the observed decline in atmospheric Hg concentrations at NH measurement [...]
Inverse modeling of satellite observations shows that the wet tropics drive the 2010-2022 methane increase
Published: 2024-01-04
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate
Atmospheric methane concentrations rose rapidly over the past decade and surged in 2020-2022 but the causes are unclear. We find from inverse analysis of GOSAT satellite observations that global methane emissions increased from 500 to 550 Tg a-1 from 2010 to 2019 and surged to 570-590 Tg a-1 in 2020-2022. Concentrations of tropospheric OH (the main methane sink) show no long-term trend over [...]
FootNet v1.0: Development of a machine learning emulator of atmospheric transport
Published: 2023-12-09
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Monitoring
There has been a proliferation of dense observing systems to monitor greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations over the past decade. Estimating emissions with these observations is often done using an atmospheric transport model to characterize the source-receptor relationship, which is commonly termed measurement "footprint". Computing and storing footprints using full-physics models is becoming [...]
Particulate nitrate photolysis as a possible driver of rising tropospheric ozone
Published: 2023-10-20
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences
Tropospheric ozone is an air pollutant and a greenhouse gas whose anthropogenic production is limited principally by the supply of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from combustion. Tropospheric ozone in the northern hemisphere has been rising despite the flattening of NOx emissions in recent decades. Here we propose that this sustained increase could result from the photolysis of nitrate particles (pNO3-) [...]
Rano Kao & Ava Ranga Uka: Rapa Nui Report 2014
Published: 2023-10-10
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies
29 March 2014 Objective: Sampling and testing Rano Kao water depth, evaporation and volume. Compare with previous results from 2005, 2008 and 2014 coring expeditions and detect the rate of change in lake water evaporation as compared to Global Meteoric Water Line.
Approaching coherent turbulence and the roll-cell transition with Lagrangian coherent structures and objective fluxes
Published: 2023-10-09
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences
We present the first analysis of objective and material vortices in Large Eddy Simulations of atmospheric boundary layer turbulence. We extract rotating fluid features that maintain structural coherence over time for near-neutral, transitional, and convective boundary layers. In contrast to traditional analysis of coherent structures in turbulent boundary layers, we provide the first objective [...]
Site selection of desert solar farms based on heterogeneous sand flux
Published: 2023-10-09
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Geomorphology, Risk Analysis
Site selection for building solar farms in deserts is crucial and must consider the dune threats associated with sand flux, such as sand burial and dust contamination. Understanding the changes in sand flux can optimize the site selection of desert solar farms. Here we use the ERA5-Land hourly wind data with 0.1°×0.1° resolution to calculate the yearly sand flux from 1950 to 2022. The mean of [...]
Spaceborne assessment of the Soviet Union's role in the 1990s methane slowdown
Published: 2023-10-04
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Methane is the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, amounting to 60% of the radiative forcing from CO2 since pre-industrial times based on emitted compound. Global atmospheric methane concentrations rose by 10-15 ppb/yr in the 1980s before abruptly slowing to 2-8 ppb/yr in the early 1990s. This period in the 1990s is known as the ``methane slowdown'' and has been attributed to the [...]
Temporal and Spatial Satellite Data Augmentation for Deep Learning-Based Rainfall Nowcasting
Published: 2023-10-03
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Climate change has been associated with alterations in precipitation patterns and increased vulnerability to floods and droughts. The need for improvements in forecasting and monitoring approaches has become imperative due to flash floods and severe flooding. Rainfall prediction is a challenging but critical issue owing to the complexity of atmospheric processes, the spatial and temporal [...]
TROPOMI/S5P sensitivity limits with respect to detection of NO2 plumes from seagoing ships
Published: 2023-09-20
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Monitoring
The marine shipping industry is among the strong emitters of nitrogen oxides (NOx) -- a substance harmful to ecology and human health. Monitoring of emissions from shipping is a significant societal task. Currently, the only technical possibility to observe NO2 emission from seagoing ships on a global scale is using TROPOMI data. A range of studies reported that NO2 plumes from some individual [...]
Recent methane surges reveal heightened emissions from tropical inundated areas
Published: 2023-09-05
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences
A Review of the Interactions between Tropical Cyclones and Environmental Vertical Wind Shear
Published: 2023-08-24
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences
Tropical cyclone (TC) structure and intensity are strongly modulated by interactions with deep-layer vertical wind shear (VWS)—the vector difference between horizontal winds at 200 and 850 hPa. This paper presents a comprehensive review of more than a century of research on TC-VWS interactions. The literature broadly agrees that a TC vortex becomes vertically tilted, precipitation organizes into [...]
The Outflow Interactions Between Binary Tropical Cyclones
Published: 2023-08-24
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences
The three-dimensional representation of an outflow jet can be used to assess whether interactions may have occurred between the outflows of binary, or spatially proximate, tropical cyclones, as outflow jets represent a dominant portion of the upper-tropospheric outflow for TCs. A novel algorithm, POJ3, for identifying and creating a three-dimensional representation of the principal outflow jet(s) [...]
Report on Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2B observations of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline methane leak
Published: 2023-08-11
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences
In late September 2022, explosions of the Nord Stream pipelines caused what could be the largest anthropogenic methane leak ever recorded. We report on Landsat 8 (L8) and Sentinel-2B (S-2B) observations of the sea foam patch produced by the Nord Stream 2 (NS2) leak located close to Bornholm Island, acquired on September 29 and 30, respectively. Usually, reflected sunlight over sea is insufficient [...]