Monitoring of atmospheric nitrogen dioxide using Ozone Monitoring Instrument remote sensing data

Abstract. Measurements from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument are used to investigate the tem-poral and spatial dynamics of global nitrogendioxide (NO2). The results show that theglobal tropo-spheric columnNO2 increased by 11.10%during 2005 to 2010 at a 1.76 % annual growth rate. The largest tropospheric and totalNO2 columns aremainly concentrated in the industrialized regions of NorthAmerica, Europe, and east Asia. The largevalues of columnNO2 are also observed and scat-tered in SouthAmerica, Africa, and Indonesia due to biomass burning and savannah fires. Average tropospheric column NO2 increased by 32.62 % at a 4.82 % annual rate over eastern Asia. On the contrary, the trenddecreasedby35.47%at a7.04%annual rate over easternAmerica.The trendwas not significant over Europe as a whole, where a decrease was observed over western and southern Europe and an increase was observed over eastern and northern Europe. Over the polluted urban areas, the ratios of tropospheric to total column NO2 are larger than 0.6 and the correlation coef-ficients are larger than 0.8. This can bemainly attributed to the anthropogenicNOx emissions over land, and it is noteworthy that the ratios are higher than 0.8 (correlation coefficients>0.95) over northern China. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the origina