First global observation of tropospheric formaldehyde from Chinese GaoFen-5 satellite: Locating source of volatile organic compounds

Wenjing Su; Cheng Liu; Qihou Hu; Chengxin Zhang; Haoran Liu; Congzi Xia; Fei Zhao; Ting Liu; Jinan Lin; Yujia Chen

doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2021.118691

First global observation of tropospheric formaldehyde from Chinese GaoFen-5 satellite: Locating source of volatile organic compounds

Environ Pollut. 2022 Mar 15:297:118691. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2021.118691. Epub 2021 Dec 15.

Authors

Wenjing Su¹, Cheng Liu², Qihou Hu³, Chengxin Zhang⁴, Haoran Liu⁵, Congzi Xia⁶, Fei Zhao⁴, Ting Liu⁶, Jinan Lin³, Yujia Chen³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China.
² Key Lab of Environmental Optics & Technology, Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China; Center for Excellence in Regional Atmospheric Environment, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, 361021, China; Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China; Key Laboratory of Precision Scientific Instrumentation of Anhui Higher Education Institutes, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China. Electronic address: chliu81@ustc.edu.cn.
³ Key Lab of Environmental Optics & Technology, Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China.
⁴ Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China.
⁵ Institute of Physical Science and Information Technology, Anhui University, Hefei, 230601, China.
⁶ School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China.

PMID: 34921943
DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2021.118691

Abstract

Satellite remote sensing is an important technique providing long-term and large-scale information of formaldehyde (HCHO), which plays a crucial role in atmospheric chemistry. Low signal-to-noise ratio and poor stability of the Environmental Trace Gases Monitoring Instrument (EMI) On board Gaofen-5 satellite, the first Chinese space-borne spectrometer, make HCHO retrieval extremely difficult. Here we firstly retrieved HCHO vertical column densities (VCDs) from EMI through in-flight spectral calibration, retrieval setting optimization and stripe correction. Retrieved EMI HCHO VCDs correlate well with those measured by Multi-AXis Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (MAX-DOAS) with normalize mean bias (NMB) below 25%. EMI HCHO VCDs are comparable with those observed by Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) and TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI). This study reveals that HCHO can be observed successfully by algorithm optimization despite of poor performance of space-borne spectrometer. The retrieved EMI HCHO VCDs are applied to locate emission sources of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

Keywords: EMI; GaoFen-5 satellite; HCHO retrieval; VOCs emission Source.

MeSH terms

Air Pollutants* / analysis
China
Formaldehyde / analysis
Nitrogen Dioxide / analysis
Ozone* / analysis
Volatile Organic Compounds*

Substances

Air Pollutants
Volatile Organic Compounds
Formaldehyde
Ozone
Nitrogen Dioxide