Data · dataset · 2026
Satellite data reveal a common combustion emission pathway for major cities in China
Listed in National Center for Atmospheric Research
Extensive fossil fuel combustion in rapidly developing cities severely affects air quality and public health.
Description
We report observational evidence of decadal changes in the efficiency and cleanness of bulk combustion over large cities in mainland China. In order to estimate the trends in enhancement ratios of CO and SO2 to NO2 (ÎCOâÎNO2 and ÎSO2âÎNO2) and infer emergent bulk combustion properties over these cities, we combine air quality retrievals from widely used satellite instruments across 2005â2014.
We present results for four Chinese cities (Shenyang, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen) representing four levels of urban development. Our results show a robust coherent progression of declining to growing ÎCOâÎNO2 relative to 2005 (â5.4±0.7 to +8.3±3.1%âyrâ1) and slowly declining ÎSO2âÎNO2 (â6.0±1.0 to â3.4±1.0â%âyrâ1) across the four cities. The coherent progression we find is not evident in the trends of emission ratios reported in Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP8.5) inventory.
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This progression is likely due to a shift towards cleaner combustion from industrial and residential sectors in Shanghai and Shenzhen that is not yet seen in Shenyang and Beijing. This overall trend is presently obfuscated by China's still relatively higher dependence on coal. Such progression is well-correlated with economic development and traces a common emission pathway that resembles evolution of air pollution in more developed cities.
Our results highlight the utility of augmenting observing and modeling capabilities by exploiting enhancement ratios in constraining the time variation in emission ratios in current inventories. As cities and/or countries continue to socioeconomically develop, the ability to monitor combustion efficiency and effectiveness of pollution control becomes increasingly important in assessing sustainable control strategies.
Links
Get the data
- Publisher page n2t.org/ark:/85065/d70k2cmc ↗
documentation · download · from data ucar edu
Where it is published
- data.ucar.edu /dataset/satellite-data-reveal-a-common-combustion-emission-pat… ↗
National Center for Atmospheric Research dataset page
landing page · from data ucar edu
Catalogue records · 1
- CKAN API data.ucar.edu/api/3/action/package_show?id=894a2e1a-0463-4dde-9d7c-8a5cc6d87… ↗
metadata API · from data ucar edu
Topics
- From keywords
- Earth & Environmental Science · Ocean & Atmospheric Science
- Inferred from text
- Atmospheric sciences 72%
Provenance · 1 source records, 8 field assertions
| Source | Key | Last seen | Raw |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Center for Atmospheric Research | 894a2e1a-0463-4dde-9d7c-8a5cc6d87860 | 11 d ago | JSON v1 |
| Field | Assertion | Extractor | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| concepts[field].anzsrc:group:3701 | enrichment · data ucar edu | taxonomy-embedding@1.1.0 | title+keywords+description (72%) |
| concepts[field].local:field:earth-environmental | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| concepts[field].local:field:ocean-atmospheric | mapping · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| created_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| description | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /notes |
| publication_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | |
| title | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 | /title |
| updated_date | source · data ucar edu | connector:data_ucar_edu@1.0.0 |