Temporal trends of anthropogenic SO2 emitted by non-ferrous metal smelters in Peru and Russia estimated from Satellite observations

摘要

We report on satellite observations of atmospheric Sulfur Dioxide (SO)emitted from metal smelting industries in Peru, South America and Siberia,Russia. Most of the non-ferrous metal ores are sulfidic and during thesmelting process the sulfur is emitted as SO. In addition to Norilsk,Russia, Peruvian copper smelters are among the most polluting point sourcesin the world. We retrieve SO column amounts from spectra of the GlobalOzone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) on the Earth Research Satellite 2 (ERS-2)for the years 1996 to 2002 using an algorithm based on differential OpticalAbsorption Spectroscopy (DOAS). Areas of enhanced SO column amountsare clearly identified on a 7-years mean map of GOME observations over theregions with La Oroya and Ilo copper smelters of Peru and Norilsk smeltersof Russia.Since the instrument sensitivity is highly dependent on surface albedo,SO vertical profile, solar zenith angle (SZA), wavelength, clouds, andaerosol, radiative transfer modelling is used to convert the analysed slantcolumn densities into vertical column densities. In this study, the fullspherical Monte-Carlo radiative transport model TRACY-II is used forSO AMF calculation.GOME data is analysed in further detail by calculating time series overthese regions. For the different locations, the results demonstrate both,increasing and decreasing trends in the SO column amounts over thetime period of 1996–2002. The decreasing trend for the Ilo copper smelter isin good agreement with implemented measures for emission reductions.However, even for the cases with decreasing trends, these point sources arestill a dominant source of anthropogenic SO emissions in their region.For the smelters in Peru, the potential influence due to SO emissionby the nearby volcanoes is investigated and found to be negligible.