Journal Article

Industrial and agricultural ammonia point sources exposed

Clerbaux, Cathy, Clarisse, Lieven, Whitburn, Simon, Coheur, Pierre-François, Hurtmans, Daniel, Hadji-Lazaro, Juliette, Van Damme, Martin

2018

Overview

Through its important role in the formation of particulate matter, atmospheric ammonia affects air quality and has implications for human health and life expectancy 1 , 2 . Excess ammonia in the environment also contributes to the acidification and eutrophication of ecosystems 3 – 5 and to climate change 6 . Anthropogenic emissions dominate natural ones and mostly originate from agricultural, domestic and industrial activities 7 . However, the total ammonia budget and the attribution of emissions to specific sources remain highly uncertain across different spatial scales 7 – 9 . Here we identify, categorize and quantify the world’s ammonia emission hotspots using a high-resolution map of atmospheric ammonia obtained from almost a decade of daily IASI satellite observations. We report 248 hotspots with diameters smaller than 50 kilometres, which we associate with either a single point source or a cluster of agricultural and industrial point sources—with the exception of one hotspot, which can be traced back to a natural source. The state-of-the-art EDGAR emission inventory 10 mostly agrees with satellite-derived emission fluxes within a factor of three for larger regions. However, it does not adequately represent the majority of point sources that we identified and underestimates the emissions of two-thirds of them by at least one order of magnitude. Industrial emitters in particular are often found to be displaced or missing. Our results suggest that it is necessary to completely revisit the emission inventories of anthropogenic ammonia sources and to account for the rapid evolution of such sources over time. This will lead to better health and environmental impact assessments of atmospheric ammonia and the implementation of suitable nitrogen management strategies. Satellite observations reveal over 200 ammonia hotspots associated with agricultural and industrial point sources, which emit much larger quantities of ammonia to the atmosphere than previously thought.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 639/638/169/824 / 639/638/169/895 / 704/172 / 704/47/4112 / Acidification / Agricultural management / Agricultural pollution / Agriculture - methods / Air pollution / Air quality / Ammonia / Ammonia - analysis / Anthropogenic factors / Atmosphere - chemistry / Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics / Biomass / Climate change / Coal-fired power plants / Ecosystems / Emission inventories / Emissions / Emissions (Pollution) / Emitters / Environmental aspects / Environmental impact / Environmental impact assessment / Environmental Pollution - analysis / Environmental Sciences / Eutrophication / Evolution / Factory farming / Fluxes / Health aspects / Human influences / Humanities and Social Sciences / Industrial areas / Industrial plant emissions / Industrial Waste - analysis / Letter / Life expectancy / Life span / multidisciplinary / Observations / Particulate emissions / Particulate matter / Physics / Point source pollution / Pollution sources / Satellite Imagery / Satellite observation / Science / Science (multidisciplinary) / State of the art / Waste Management