Analysis of carbon monoxide budget in North China Original Research Article

A global chemical transport model (MOZART-2; model of ozone and related tracers, version 2) was used to assess physical and chemical processes that control the budget of tropospheric carbon monoxide (CO) in North China. Satellite observations of CO from the measurements of pollution in the troposphere (MOPITT) instrument are combined with model results for the analysis. The comparison between the model simulations and the satellite observations of total column CO (TCO) shows that the model can reproduce the spatial and temporal distributions. However, the model results underestimate TCO by 23% in North China. This underestimation of TCO may be caused by the uncertainties of emissions. The tropospheric CO budget analysis suggests that in North China, surface emission is the largest source of tropospheric CO. The main sinks of tropospheric CO in this region are chemical reaction and stratosphere_and_troposphere exchange. The analysis also shows that most of inflow CO to Pacific regions comes from the upwind regions of North China. This transport of CO is significant during Winter and Spring time.