Assessment of Updated Fuel‐Based Emissions Inventories Over the Contiguous United States Using TROPOMI NO ₂ Retrievals

Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are air pollutants critical to ozone and fine particle production in the troposphere. Here, we present fuel-based emission inventories updated 2018, including for mobile source engines using Fuel-based Inventory of Vehicle Emissions (FIVEs) oil gas Oil Gas (FOG) inventory. The FIVE emissions now consistent with NEI17 estimates differing within 2% across contiguous US (CONUS). Tropospheric NO2 columns modeled by Weather Research Forecasting Chemistry model (WRF-Chem) compared those observed TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) Ozone (OMI) during summer 2018. Modeled show strong temporal spatial correlations TROPOMI (OMI), identified biases −3% (−21%) over CONUS, +8% (−6%) point sources plus urban regions. Taking account negative bias (∼20%) early version polluted regions, WRF-Chem shows good performance FOG emissions. Our tends under-predict tropospheric background rural regions (bias −21% −3%). Through sensitivity analyses, demonstrate important roles from soils (11.7% average CONUS), (4.1%), wildfires (10.6%), lightning (2.3%) greater contributions at regional scales. This work provides a roadmap satellite-based evaluations updates various sources.