Global inventory of nitrogen oxide emissions constrained by space‐based observations of NO2 columns

We use tropospheric NO 2 columns from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) satellite instrument to derive top‐down constraints on emissions of nitrogen oxides (NO x ≡ NO + NO 2 ), and combine these with a priori information from a bottom‐up emission inventory (with error weighting) to achieve an optimized a posteriori estimate of the global distribution of surface NO x emissions. Our GOME NO 2 retrieval improves on previous work by accounting for scattering and absorption of radiation by aerosols; the effect on the air mass factor (AMF) ranges from +10 to −40% depending on the region. Our AMF also includes local information on relative vertical profiles (shape factors) of NO 2 from a global 3‐D chemical transport model (GEOS‐CHEM); assumption of a globally uniform shape factor, as in most previous retrievals, would introduce regional biases of up to 40% over industrial regions and a factor of 2 over remote regions. We derive a top‐down NO x emission inventory from the GOME data by using the local GEOS‐CHEM relationship between NO 2 columns and NO x emissions. The resulting NO x emissions for industrial regions are aseasonal, despite large seasonal variation in NO 2 columns, providing confidence in the method. Top‐down errors in monthly NO x emissions are comparable with bottom‐up errors over source regions. Annual global a posteriori errors are half of a priori errors. Our global a posteriori estimate for annual land surface NO x emissions (37.7 Tg N yr −1 ) agrees closely with the GEIA‐based a priori (36.4) and with the EDGAR 3.0 bottom‐up inventory (36.6), but there are significant regional differences. A posteriori NO x emissions are higher by 50–100% in the Po Valley, Tehran, and Riyadh urban areas, and by 25–35% in Japan and South Africa. Biomass burning emissions from India, central Africa, and Brazil are lower by up to 50%; soil NO x emissions are appreciably higher in the western United States, the Sahel, and southern Europe.