A081-07
Reduced greenhouse gas emissions seen from the in-situ aircraft observation over the Baltimore, MD-Washington, D.C. area during COVID-19 pandemic period: Mass balance flux estimation of CO2, CO, CH4 and source sector attribution using activity metric data
Wednesday, 9 December 2020: 20:54
Virtual
Doyeon Ahn, University of Maryland College Park, College Park, MD, United States, Xinrong Ren, University of Maryland, Dept. of Atmos. & Oceanic Sci., NOAA Air Resources Laboratory, College Park, MD, United States, Philip Stratton, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, United States, Joel Dreessen, Maryland Department of the Environment, Air Monitoring Program, Baltimore, MD, United States, Paul Shepson, Stony Brook University, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook, NY, United States, Eric A Kort, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, Colm Sweeney, NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, Alexander J. Turner, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States, James R Whetstone, National Institute of Standards and Technology Gaithersburg, Gaithersburg, MD, United States, Ross J Salawitch, University of Maryland, AOSC and Chemistry, College Park, MD, United States and Russell R. Dickerson, University of Maryland, College Park, United States
Abstract:
On 30 March 2020, formal stay-at-home orders were issued for D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (DMV) area due to the spread of COVID-19. To investigate the impact of COVID-19 on greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants, a series of research flights was coordinated among University of Maryland (UMD), Purdue University, and NOAA. A total of 35 flights were conducted over the Northeast corridor (D.C. to Boston) during April-May 2020 by the UMD Cessna, Purdue Duchess, and NOAA Mooney aircrafts. In February 2020, prior to major COVID-19 outbreak in DMV area, the UMD Cessna aircraft sampled plumes from the Baltimore, MD-Washington, D.C. (Balt-Wash) area during four research flights. These collective aircraft in-situ data, which cover before/after the COVID-19 outbreak, allow us to quantify the change in the emissions of CO
2, CO, and CH
4 from the Balt-Wash area.
The daily GPP product with ~500 m resolution, inferred from downscaled TROPOMI SIF product, was analyzed to account for the impact of active biosphere in the aircraft in-situ measurements of CO
2.
Preliminary results of mass balance flux calculation indicate that both CO2 and CO emissions from the Balt-Wash area were reduced by roughly half from February to April 2020, while the observed change in CH4 emissions was statistically insignificant. We attribute approximately a third of the observed reduction to the normal-year seasonality of CO2 emissions (i.e. reduced energy demand for spatial heating) based on the analysis of three bottom-up products (ACES, EDGAR, ODIAC). The remaining two third of the observed reduction in CO2 is attributed to the reduced social/economic activity due to COVID-19 (i.e. other fossil fuel use reductions, e.g. in building management and power production). Also, we estimate the expected emission reduction using Maryland GHG inventory for year 2017 and the activity metric data collected during the COVID19 pandemic period (i.e. Apple/Google mobility reports, Traffic count, CEMS data). Preliminary results show that ~27% reduction in CO2 from February to April is expected due to reduced traffic and industrial activity, while a 2% increase in CO2 is expected from the residential sector as people spent more time at home. Finally, analysis of the ratio of CO to CO2 was conducted to corroborate the source sector attribution.
