Articles | Volume 18, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-2749-2026
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-2749-2026
Data description article
 | 
21 Apr 2026
Data description article |  | 21 Apr 2026

Deriving regional and point source nitrogen oxides emissions in China from TROPOMI using the directional derivative approach with nonlinear chemical lifetime fitting

Ling Chen, Zhaonan Cai, Kang Sun, Yi Liu, Dongxu Yang, Mingming Li, and Lingyun Zhu

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Cited articles

Ayazpour, Z., Sun, K., Zhang, R., and Shen, H.: Evaluation of the Directional Derivative Approach for Timely and Accurate Satellite-Based Emission Estimation Using Chemical Transport Model Simulation of Nitrogen Oxides, J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 130, e2024JD042817, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JD042817, 2025. 
Beirle, S., Borger, C., Dörner, S., Li, A., Hu, Z., Liu, F., Wang, Y., and Wagner, T.: Pinpointing nitrogen oxide emissions from space, Sci. Adv., 5, eaax9800, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax9800, 2019. 
Beirle, S., Borger, C., Dörner, S., Eskes, H., Kumar, V., de Laat, A., and Wagner, T.: Catalog of NOx emissions from point sources as derived from the divergence of the NO2 flux for TROPOMI, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 13, 2995–3012, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-2995-2021, 2021. 
Beirle, S., Borger, C., Jost, A., and Wagner, T.: Improved catalog of NOx point source emissions (version 2), Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 15, 3051–3073, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-15-3051-2023, 2023. 
Byers, L., Friedrich, J., Hennig, R., Kressig, A., Li, X., McCormick, C., and Malaguzzi Valeri, L.: Global Power Plant Database Datasets, Version 1.3.0, https://datasets.wri.org//datasets/global-power-plant-database (last access: 22 January 2025), 2019. 
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Short summary
An appropriate representation of the NOx/NO2 ratio and NOx lifetime is essential for satellite-based NOx emissions estimation. We introduce a lightweight approach that applies variable NOx/NO2 ratios and piecewise fitting based on the directional derivative approach (DDA) to estimate regional and point-source NOx emissions. Our method directly captures nonlinear NOx chemistry and serves as an efficient alternative to both bottom-up inventories and computationally demanding top-down models.
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