Analysis of CO2 Content and Emission Based on OCO-2 Satellite Measurements

The observed changes in the Earth’s climate necessitate monitoring the content of greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, the main anthropogenic gas. In recent decades, satellite remote sensing has been actively used to monitor the total content of CO2 and its anthropogenic emission. The paper presents examples of analysis of XCO2 measurements by the OCO-2 (Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2) satellite in order to study the spatiotemporal distribution of CO2 in the vicinity of industrial cities in Russia (16 cities) and estimate its anthropogenic emission. For a number of the cities (Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, and Novosibirsk), temporal variations of XCO2 were studied in detail, and for Chelyabinsk, estimates of anthropogenic CO2 emission were given using OCO-2 measurements. The seasonal course of XCO2 in the area of the cities under study is characterized by a maximum in late winter–early spring and a minimum in late summer, which corresponds to the seasonal change in the CO2 content in other parts of the planet. According to OCO-2 measurements in the cities of Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, and Yekaterinburg, the range of long-term trends in XCO2 is 1.9–2.7 ppm/yr. Using OCO-2 measurements from June 5, 2021, CO2 emission from the territory of Chelyabinsk was estimated at 16 Mt yr–1 from the area of the probable source or ~0.9 Mt yr–1 km–2. Analysis of anthropogenic CO2 emission based on the EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) v.8.0 inventory databases for 2021 showed that the specific gas emission in the city was ~0.5 Mt g–1 km–2.