Active and passive satellite observations coupled with carbon–nitrogen synergy for urban fossil fuel CO 2 emissions monitoring
7 affiliations
- 1Hubei Key Laboratory of Quantitative Remote Sensing of Land and Atmosphere, School of Remote Sensing and Information Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430079, China
- 2Wuhan University (Wuhan, China)
- 3State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Luoyu Road No.129, Wuhan 430079, China
- 4Perception and Effectiveness Assessment for Carbon-neutrality Efforts, Engineering Research Center of Ministry of Education, Institute for Carbon Neutrality, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
- 5Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, LSCE/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris-Saclay, 91198 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
- 6Electronic Information School, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
- 7Wuhan Institute of Quantum Technology, Wuhan, China
Abstract
Accurate estimation of fossil fuel CO2 (ffCO2) emissions is essential for climate prediction and the development of mitigation policies. Top-down carbon–nitrogen joint observations offer the potential for more reliable ffCO2 estimates. Here, we establish an inversion framework for urban ffCO2 emissions based on combined active–passive satellite observations. Urban ffCO2 distributions were first constructed using satellite NO₂ data and CO2-NOx emission ratios, and monthly ffCO2 emissions for selected global cities were then estimated by integrating XCO2 observations from the DQ-1 ACDL instrument. Our results show that satellite-derived NOx emissions provide strong constraints on urban anthropogenic CO2 estimates. Validation against TCCON ground-based observations indicates that, compared with conventional top-down inversion approaches, our method more accurately reproduces urban ffXCO2 plume distributions. We further evaluated the influence of different CO2-NOx ratio calculation methods on ffCO2 estimates and found variations exceeding 150, exerting a substantial impact on emission inversions. Under observational constraints, the uncertainty in CO2-NOx ratios derived from different methods decreased by 9.79–38.78 %, and the variation range was reduced by more than 100 %, converging toward a consistent magnitude. This study advances understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns of urban ffCO2 emissions and provides a unified perspective for future CO2-NOx-based anthropogenic carbon emission estimation.
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BibTeX
@article{yi2026active,
title = {{Active and passive satellite observations coupled with carbon–nitrogen synergy for urban fossil fuel CO 2 emissions monitoring}},
author = {Jinchun Yi and Yiyang Huang and Ge Han and Hongyuan Zhang and Zhipeng Pei and Haotian Luo and Yu Zhang and Tianqi Shi and Siwei Li and Wei Gong},
journal = {Atmospheric chemistry and physics},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
doi = {10.5194/acp-26-8475-2026},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-26-8475-2026},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Active and passive satellite observations coupled with carbon–nitrogen synergy for urban fossil fuel CO 2 emissions monitoring
AU - Jinchun Yi
AU - Yiyang Huang
AU - Ge Han
AU - Hongyuan Zhang
AU - Zhipeng Pei
AU - Haotian Luo
AU - Yu Zhang
AU - Tianqi Shi
AU - Siwei Li
AU - Wei Gong
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/06/17
JO - Atmospheric chemistry and physics
DO - 10.5194/acp-26-8475-2026
UR - https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-26-8475-2026
AB - Accurate estimation of fossil fuel CO2 (ffCO2) emissions is essential for climate prediction and the development of mitigation policies. Top-down carbon–nitrogen joint observations offer the potential for more reliable ffCO2 estimates. Here, we establish an inversion framework for urban ffCO2 emissions based on combined active–passive satellite observations. Urban ffCO2 distributions were first constructed using satellite NO₂ data and CO2-NOx emission ratios, and monthly ffCO2 emissions for selected global cities were then estimated by integrating XCO2 observations from the DQ-1 ACDL instrument. Our results show that satellite-derived NOx emissions provide strong constraints on urban anthropogenic CO2 estimates. Validation against TCCON ground-based observations indicates that, compared with conventional top-down inversion approaches, our method more accurately reproduces urban ffXCO2 plume distributions. We further evaluated the influence of different CO2-NOx ratio calculation methods on ffCO2 estimates and found variations exceeding 150, exerting a substantial impact on emission inversions. Under observational constraints, the uncertainty in CO2-NOx ratios derived from different methods decreased by 9.79–38.78 %, and the variation range was reduced by more than 100 %, converging toward a consistent magnitude. This study advances understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns of urban ffCO2 emissions and provides a unified perspective for future CO2-NOx-based anthropogenic carbon emission estimation.
SN - 1680-7316
SN - 1680-7324
ER -