Ronald van der A

Ronald van der A
Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Instituut | KNMI

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71
Publications
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Introduction
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Publications

Publications (71)
Article
Full-text available
Since the launch of TROPOMI on the Sentinel-5 Precursor (S5P) satellite, NO2 observations have become available with a resolution of 3.5× 5 km, which makes monitoring NOx emissions possible at the scale of city districts and industrial facilities. For Europe, emissions are reported on an annual basis for country totals and large industrial faciliti...
Preprint
Full-text available
The rapid development of the economy and the implementation of environmental policies adapted in India has led to fast changes of regional SO2 emissions. We present a monthly SO2 emission inventory for India covering December 2018 to November 2023 based on the TROPOMI Level-2 COBRA SO2 dataset, by using an improved flux-divergence method and estima...
Preprint
We introduce an innovative method to distinguish soil nitrogen oxides (NOx=NO+NO2) emissions from satellite-based total NOx emissions using its seasonal characteristics. To evaluate the approach, we compare the deviation between the tropospheric NO2 concentration observed by satellite and two atmospheric composition model simulations driven by the...
Article
Full-text available
Urban heat island (UHI) and urban air pollution are two major environmental problems faced by many metropolises. The UHI affects air pollution by changing the local circulation and the chemical reaction environment, e.g. air temperature and relative humidity. In this study, the WRF-CMAQ (Weather Research and Forecasting Community Multiscale Air Qua...
Article
Full-text available
Ozone (O3) plays a significant role in weather and climate on regional to global spatial scales. Most studies on the variability in the total column of O3 (TCO) are typically carried out using daytime data. Based on knowledge of the chemistry and transport of O3, significant deviations between daytime and night-time O3 are only expected either in t...
Article
Full-text available
Changes in CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic have been estimated from indicators on activities like transportation and electricity generation. Here, we instead use satellite observations together with bottom-up information to track the daily dynamics of CO2 emissions during the pandemic. Unlike activity data, our observation-based analysis...
Preprint
Full-text available
Ozone (O3) plays a significant role in weather and climate on regional to global spatial scales. Most studies on the variability in the total column of O3 (TCO) are typically analysed using daytime data. Based on knowledge of the chemistry and transport of O3, significant deviations between daytime and nighttime O3 are only expected either in the p...
Article
Full-text available
We derived global tropospheric ozone (O3) columns from GOME-2A (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) and OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument) O3 profiles, which were simultaneously assimilated into the TM5 (Tracer Model, version 5) global chemistry transport model for the year 2008. The horizontal model resolution has been increased by a factor of 6 fo...
Article
Full-text available
In this work, a ∼21-year global dataset from four different satellite sensors with a mid-morning overpass (GOME/ERS-2, SCIAMACHY/ENVISAT, GOME-2/Metop-A, and GOME-2/Metop-B) is compiled to study the long-term tropospheric NO2 patterns and trends. The Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) and GOME-2 data are “corrected” relative to the SCanning...
Article
Currently, haze events in winter occur more frequently than decades ago, especially in Eastern and Central China, including the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). WRF-Chem is applied in this study to explore the discrepancies of the simulated air pollutants induced by employing different emission inventories, particularly during haze events. Two inventorie...
Article
Full-text available
To derive global tropospheric O3 columns from satellite observations, O3 profiles retrieved from GOME-2A and OMI measurements were simultaneously assimilated into the TM5 global chemistry transport model for the year 2008. The horizontal model resolution has been increased by a factor of 6 for more accurate results, but to reduce computational cost...
Article
Full-text available
Global observations of tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) columns have been shown to be feasible from space, but consistent multi-sensor records do not yet exist, nor are they covered by planned activities at the international level. Harmonised, multi-decadal records of NO2 columns and their associated uncertainties can provide crucial information...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding long-term variations in aerosol loading is essential for evaluating the health and climate effects of airborne particulates as well as the effectiveness of pollution control policies. The expected satellite lifetime is about 10 to 15 years. Therefore, to study the variations of atmospheric constituents over longer periods information...
Article
Full-text available
In this work, a ~21-years self-consistent global dataset from four different satellite sensors with a mid-morning overpass (GOME/ERS-2, SCIAMACHY/ENVISAT, GOME-2/Metop-A and GOME-2/Metop-B) is compiled to study the long-term tropospheric NO2 patterns and trends. The GOME and GOME-2 data are corrected relative to the SCIAMACHY data in order to repro...
Article
Full-text available
Global observations of tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) columns have been shown to be feasible from space, but consistent multi-sensor records do not yet exist, nor are they covered by planned activities on the international level. Harmonised, multi-decadal records of NO2 columns and their associated uncertainties can provide crucial information...
Article
Full-text available
Atmospheric ozone plays a key role in air quality and the radiation budget of the Earth, both directly and through its chemical influence on other trace gases. Assessments of the atmospheric ozone distribution and associated climate change therefore demand accurate vertically resolved ozone observations with both stratospheric and tropospheric sens...
Article
Full-text available
This overview paper highlights the successes of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on board the Aura satellite spanning a period of nearly 14 years. Data from OMI has been used in a wide range of applications and research resulting in many new findings. Due to its unprecedented spatial resolution, in combination with daily global coverage, OMI p...
Article
Full-text available
In this study, the tropospheric NO2 vertical column density (VCD) over an urban site in Guangzhou megacity in China is investigated by means of MAX-DOAS measurements during a campaign from late March 2015 to mid-March 2016. A MAX-DOAS system was deployed at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and operated ther...
Article
Full-text available
Chemical transport models together with emission inventories are widely used to simulate NO2 concentrations over China, but validation of the simulations with in situ measurements has been extremely limited. Here we use ground measurements obtained from the air quality monitoring network recently developed by the Ministry of Environmental Protectio...
Article
Full-text available
A three-dimensional global ozone distribution has been derived from assimilation of ozone profiles that were observed by satellites. By simultaneous assimilation of ozone profiles retrieved from the nadir looking satellite instruments Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment 2 (GOME-2) and Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), which measure the atmosphere a...
Article
Full-text available
Atmospheric ozone plays a key role in air quality and the radiation budget of the Earth, both directly and through its chemical influence on other trace gases. Assessments of the atmospheric ozone distribution and associated climate change therefore demand accurate vertically-resolved ozone observations with both stratospheric and tropospheric sens...
Article
Full-text available
In this study, the tropospheric NO2 vertical column density (VCD) over an urban site in Guangzhou megacity in China is investigated, by means of MAX-DOAS measurements during a campaign from late March 2015 to mid-March 2016. A MAX-DOAS system was deployed at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and operated the...
Article
Full-text available
A three-dimensional global ozone distribution has been derived from assimilation of ozone profiles that were observed by satellite. By simultaneous assimilation of ozone profiles retrieved from the nadir looking satellite instruments Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment 2 (GOME-2) and Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), which measure the atmosphere at...
Article
Full-text available
Chemical transport models together with emission inventories are widely used to simulate NO2 concentrations over China, but validation of the simulations with in situ measurements has been extremely limited. Here we use ground measurements obtained from the air quality monitoring network recently developed by the Ministry of Environmental Protectio...
Article
Full-text available
Satellite nitrogen dioxide (NO2) observations have been widely used to evaluate emission changes. To determine trends in nitrogen oxides (NOx) emission over China, we used a method independent of chemical transport models to quantify the NOx emissions from 48 cities and seven power plants over China, on the basis of Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI...
Article
Full-text available
This overview paper highlights the successes of the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) spanning more than 12 years of the OMI data record. Data from OMI has been used in a wide range of applications. Due to its unprecedented spatial resolution, in combination with daily global coverage, OMI plays a unique role in measuring trace gases important for...
Data
The dataset used for the paper found under: http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/acp-2016-1146/#discussion. Columns: year, day of year, 10 min dose from TEMIS x 3, time in minutes, SZA, cloud flag (0: cloudy, 1: cloudless), aod @ 340 nm, aod flag (0:false, 1: linear interpolated, 2: exact measurement), NILU dose rate x 3
Data
The dataset used for the paper found under: http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/acp-2016-1146/#discussion. Columns: year, day of year, 10 min dose from TEMIS x 3, time in minutes, SZA, cloud flag (0: cloudy, 1: cloudless), aod @ 340 nm, aod flag (0:false, 1: linear interpolated, 2: exact measurement), NILU dose rate x 3
Article
Full-text available
Air quality observations by satellite instruments are global and have a regular temporal resolution, which makes them very useful in studying long-term trends in atmospheric species. To monitor air quality trends in China for the period 2005–2015, we derive SO2 columns and NOx emissions on a provincial level with improved accuracy. To put these tre...
Article
Full-text available
This study aims to cross-validate ground-based and satellite-based models of three photobiological UV effective dose products: the Commission Internationale de l'Éclairage (CIE) erythemal UV, the production of vitamin D in the skin, and DNA damage, using high-temporal-resolution surface-based measurements of solar UV spectral irradiances from a syn...
Article
Full-text available
Tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) column densities detected from space are widely used to infer trends in terrestrial nitrogen oxide (NO x) emissions. We study changes in NO2 column densities using the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) over China from 2005 to 2015 and compare them with the bottom-up inventory to examine NO x emission trends and t...
Article
Full-text available
We improve the emission estimate algorithm DECSO (Daily Emission estimates Constrained by Satellite Observations) to better detect NOx emissions over remote areas. The new version is referred to as DECSO v5. The error covariance of the sensitivity of NO2 column observations to gridded NOx emissions has been better characterized. This reduces the ba...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
With the rapid development of the Chinese economy since 2000, sulfur 6 dioxide, SO 2 , emissions from China have been of increasing global concern. There 7 have been indications that the emission growth rate slowed around 2005 and that 8 emissions began to decrease after 2006, mainly due to the wide application of 9 flue-gas desulfurization devices...
Article
Full-text available
Air quality observations by satellite instruments are spatially consistent, and have a regular temporal resolution, which make them very useful in studying long-term trends in atmospheric species. To monitor air quality trends in China for the period 2005–2015 we derive SO2 columns and NOx emissions on a provincial level with an unprecedented accur...
Conference Paper
The present study aims to validate different approaches for the estimation of three photobiological effective doses: the erythemal UV, the vitamin D and that for DNA damage, using high temporal resolution surface-based measurements of solar UV from 2005-2015. Data from a UV spectrophotometer, a multi-filter radiometer, and a UV radiation pyranomete...
Article
Full-text available
The vulnerability of the European airspace to volcanic eruptions was brought to the attention of the public and the scientific community by the 2010 eruptions of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull. As a consequence of this event, ash concentration thresholds replaced the “zero tolerance to ash” rule, drastically changing the requirements on sat...
Article
Full-text available
The main aim of the paper is to demonstrate an approach for post-processing of the Dobson spectrophotometers' total ozone columns (TOCs) in order to compensate for their known stratospheric effective temperature (Teff) dependency and its resulting effect on the usage of the Dobson TOCs for satellite TOCs' validation. The Dobson observations employe...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
As part of EU FP7 Monitoring and Assessment of Regional air quality in China using space Observations, Project Of Long-term sino-european coOperation , MarcoPolo, project, http://www.marcopolo.eu/, the long trends of atmospheric sulphur dioxide, SO2, have been studied from a spade of satellite instruments and algorithms [Koukouli et al., 2016]. Poi...
Article
Full-text available
Past studies suggest that forest fires contribute significantly to the formation of ozone in the troposphere. However, the emissions of ozone precursors from wildfires, and the mechanisms involved in ozone production from boreal fires, are very complicated. Moreover, an evaluation of the role of forest fires is prevented by the lack of direct obser...
Article
Full-text available
Volcanic eruptions emit plumes of ash and gases in the atmosphere, potentially at very high altitudes. Ash rich plumes are hazardous for airplanes as ash is very abrasive and easily melts inside their engines. With more than 50 active volcanoes per year and the ever increasing number of commercial flights, the safety of airplanes is a real concern....
Article
Volcanic eruptions can emit large quantities of fine particles (ash) into the atmosphere as well as several trace gases, such as water vapour, carbon dioxide, sulphur species (SO2, H2S) and halogens (HCl, HBr, HF). These volcanic ejecta can have a considerable impact on the atmosphere, human health and society. Volcanic ash in particular is known t...
Article
Full-text available
We present a new dataset of formaldehyde vertical columns retrieved from observations of GOME-2 on board the EUMETSAT MetOp-A platform between 2007 and 2011. The new retrieval scheme, which has been optimised for GOME-2, includes a two-step fitting procedure that strongly reduces the impact of spectral interferences between H2CO and BrO, and a modi...
Article
Full-text available
Emission inventories of air pollutants are crucial information for policy makers and form important input data for air quality models. Using satellite observations for emission estimates has important advantages over bottom-up emission inventories: they are spatially consistent, have high temporal resolution, and enable updates shortly after the sa...
Article
A global nine-year archive of monthly tropospheric NO2 data acquired by the SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CartograpHY (SCIAMACHY) instrument was analyzed with respect to trends between August 2002 and August 2011. In the past, similar studies relied on combining data from multiple sensors; however, the length of the SCIAM...
Article
Full-text available
The trend in stratospheric NO2 column at the NDACC (Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change) station of Jungfraujoch (46.5° N, 8.0° E) is assessed using ground-based FTIR and zenith-scattered visible sunlight SAOZ measurements over the period 1990 to 2009 as well as a composite satellite nadir data set constructed from ERS-2/GOM...
Article
Full-text available
Several large-scale climate patterns influenced climate conditions and weather patterns across the globe during 2010. The transition from a warm El Nino phase at the beginning of the year to a cool La Nina phase by July contributed to many notable events, ranging from record wetness across much of Australia to historically low Eastern Pacific basin...
Article
Full-text available
We present an improved tropospheric nitrogen dioxide column retrieval algorithm (DOMINO v2.0) for OMI based on better air mass factors (AMFs) and a correction for across-track stripes resulting from calibration errors in the OMI backscattered reflectances. Since October 2004, NO2 retrievals from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), a UV/Vis nadir...
Article
Full-text available
Concurrent (August 2006) measurements of tropospheric NO2 columns from OMI aboard Aura (1330 local overpass time) and SCIAMACHY aboard Envisat (1000 local overpass time) offer an opportunity to examine the consistency between the two instruments under tropospheric background conditions and the effect of different observing times. For scenes with tr...
Article
Full-text available
For the period 1996-2006, global distributions of tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) have been derived from radiances measured with the satellite instruments GOME (Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment) and SCIAMACHY (SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CartograpHY). A statistical analysis is applied to derive trends and seasonal...
Article
Full-text available
The El Niño event of 1997/1998 caused dry conditions over the Indonesian area that were followed by large scale forest and savannah fires over Kalimantan, Sumatra, Java, and parts of Irian Jaya. Biomass burning was most intense between August and October 1997, and large amounts of ozone precursors, such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and hydro...