AEROSOL EMISSION ESTIMATES

* Introduction

This document discusses the aerosol emission data made available within the MarcoPolo and
GlobEmission projects at silam.fmi.fi/globemission/asia/datapage.php.

The emission estimates have been obtained using MODIS satellite aersol observations and
inverse modeling. The model computations employ a traditional emission inventory as the first
guess (a priori emissions), and the inversion results in a refinement optimizing the
agreement between the simulated and observed aerosol loadings. The inversion is based on a
4D-Var scheme presented by Vira & Sofiev (2012).

The a priori emissions for anthropogenic sources are given by the MACCity inventory
(Lamarque et al., 2010). The a priori emissions for wildfires are from IS4FIRES
(Sofiev et al., 2009, is4fires.fmi.fi).

* The file format and contents

The data are given in NetCDF3 format for years 2009-2011. The anthropogenic emissions
correspond to the sum of organic and black carbon species in the MACCity inventory. The
wildfire emissions correspond to the total PM2.5 in the IS4FIRES inventory.

The emissions are given in monthly averages, on a regular lon-lat grid with 0.5 degree
horizonal resolution.

* Notes on the emission fields

The dataset is intended for research use. Although the inversion aims to quantify the
anthropogenic emission sources, the available information is not sufficient to reliably
distinguish between various emission sources, including biomass burning, and natural
primary and secondary aerosols. 

* Contacts

Julius Vira, Finnish Meteorological Institute
first_name dot lastname at fmi dot fi

* References

Lamarque, J.-F., Bond, T.C., Eyring, V., Granier, C., Heil, a., Klimont, Z., Lee, D.,
Liousse, C., Mieville, a., Owen, B., Schultz, M.G., Shindell, D., Smith, S.J., Stehfest,
E., Van Aardenne, J., Cooper, O.R., Kainuma, M., Mahowald, N., McConnell, J.R., Naik, V.,
Riahi, K., van Vuuren, D.P., 2010. Historical (1850-2000) gridded anthropogenic and
biomass burning emissions of reactive gases and aerosols: methodology and
application. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 10, 7017-7039.

Sofiev, M., Vankevich, R., Lotjonen, M., Prank, M., Petukhov, V., Ermakova, T., Koskinen,
J., Kukkonen, J., 2009. An operational system for the assimilation of the satellite
information on wild-land fires for the needs of air quality modelling and
forecasting. Atmos. Chem. Phys. 9, 6833–6847. doi:10.5194/acp-9-6833-2009

Vira, J., Sofiev, M., 2012. On variational data assimilation for estimating the model
initial conditions and emission fluxes for short-term forecasting of SOx
concentrations. Atmos. Environ. 46, 318-328.