New publication First simultaneous satellite measurements of NO2 and CO2 plumes over power plants

A team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Thomas Wagner (Institute of Environmental Physics and Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz) in collaboration with the team of Prof. Dr. André Butz (Institute of Environmental Physics) has succeeded for the first time in generating simultaneous, high-resolution images of nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide plumes from coal-fired power plants using spectral data from the German EnMAP satellite (Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program).

EnMAP is a hyperspectral satellite that scans selected target regions of the earth's surface with a ground resolution of about 30 meters. The satellite's primary objective is the remote sensing of land surfaces. However, under good conditions, the spectrally coarse-resolution spectra can also be used to obtain information on nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) in the visible and carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the short-wave infrared spectral range. The team from Mainz and Heidelberg has now been able to quantify individual exhaust plumes of the two gases from coal-fired power plants using spectral analysis with a ground resolution of several tens of meters. This lays the foundation for estimating emissions of the two gases and investigating the photochemical conversion of nitrogen monoxide (NO) to NO₂ in the turbulent exhaust plumes. The measured concentration ratios could also be useful for calibrating methods that attempt to infer CO₂ emissions from NO₂ measurements alone.