Understanding the influence of combustion on atmospheric CO 2 over Europe by using satellite observations of CO 2 and reactive trace gases

Abstract. We assess how nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2), carbon monoxide (CO) and formaldehyde (HCHO) can be used as proxies to determine the combustion contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) using satellite observations. We focus our analysis on 2018 when there is a full complement of column data from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (NO2, CO, and HCHO) and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (CO2). We use the nested GEOS-Chem atmospheric chemistry model to relate high-resolution emission inventories over Europe to these atmospheric data, taking into account scene-dependent averaging kernels. We find that that NO2 and CO are the better candidates to identify incomplete combustion and fingerprints of different combustion sectors, but both have their own challenges associated with properly describing their atmospheric chemistry. The secondary source of HCHO from oxidation of biogenic volatile organic compounds, particularly over southern European countries, compromises its use as a proxy for combustion emissions. We find a weak positive correlation between the CO : CO2 inventory ratio and observed column enhancements of ΔCO : ΔCO2 (R