MAX-DOAS measurements and satellite validation of tropospheric NO2 and SO2 vertical column densities at a rural site of North China

North China (NC), namely Huabei in Chinese, is one of the most severely polluted regions in China, and the air pollution issues in this region have received a worldwide attention. We performed ground-based Multi Axis Differential Absorption Spectroscopy (MAX-DOAS) measurements at Gucheng, (39 degrees 08'N, 115 degrees 40'E), a rural site of North China about 110 km southwest of Beijing, from September 2008 to September 2010. The tropospheric vertical column densities (VCDs) of NO2 and SO2 were retrieved using the so-called geometric approximation. The results show that the tropospheric NO2 and SO2 VCDs over NC have nearly the same seasonal variation pattern, with the maximum in winter and minimum in summer, while their diurnal variations are different We also compared the tropospheric NO2 and SO2 VCDs from our MAX-DOAS measurements with several products of corresponding OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument) satellite observations. While in summer good agreement is found, the satellite observations systematically underestimate the tropospheric NO2 in winter over the polluted rural area of NC, probably mostly due to the so called aerosol shielding effect. In contrast, for SO2 no such clear conclusion can be drawn, probably owing to the larger uncertainties from MAX-DOAS and in particular satellite retrievals. This indicates that improvements of the retrieval algorithm for MAX-DOAS and offline corrections of satellite measurements for the tropospheric SO2 VCDs should be given more emphasis in the future. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved