We combine in situ measurements of sea salt aerosols (SS) from open ocean cruises and ground-based stations together with aerosol optical depth (AOD) observations from MODIS and AERONET, and the GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model to provide new constraints on SS emissions over the world's oceans. We find that the GEOS-Chem model using the Gong (2003) source function overestimates cruise observations of coarse mode SS mass concentrations by factors of 2–3 at high wind speeds over the cold waters of the Southern, North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. Furthermore, the model systematically underestimates SS over the warm tropical waters of the Central Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. This pattern is confirmed by SS measurements from a global network of 15 island and coastal stations. The model discrepancy at high wind speeds (>6 m s ⁻¹) has a clear dependence on sea surface temperature (SST). We use the cruise observations to derive an empirical SS source function depending on both wind speed and SST. Implementing this new source function in GEOS-Chem results in improved agreement with in situ observations, with a decrease in the model bias from +64% to +33% for the cruises and from +32% to −5% for the ground-based sites. We also show that the wind speed-SST source function significantly improves agreement with MODIS and AERONET AOD, and provides an explanation for the high AOD observed over the tropical oceans. With the wind speed-SST formulation, global SS emissions show a small decrease from 5200 Mg yr⁻¹ to 4600 Mg yr⁻¹, while the SS burden decreases from 9.1 to 8.5 mg m⁻². The spatial distribution of SS, however, is greatly affected, with the SS burden increasing by 50% in the tropics and decreasing by 40% at mid- and high-latitudes. Our results imply a stronger than expected halogen source from SS in the tropical marine boundary layer. They also imply stronger radiative forcing of SS in the tropics and a larger response of SS emissions to climate change than previously thought.

Ambient fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) is the world’s leading environmental health risk factor. Reducing the PM_2.5 disease burden requires specific strategies that target dominant sources across multiple spatial scales. We provide a contemporary and comprehensive evaluation of sector- and fuel-specific contributions to this disease burden across 21 regions, 204 countries, and 200 sub-national areas by integrating 24 global atmospheric chemistry-transport model sensitivity simulations, high-resolution satellite-derived PM_2.5 exposure estimates, and disease-specific concentration response relationships. Globally, 1.05 (95% Confidence Interval: 0.74–1.36) million deaths were avoidable in 2017 by eliminating fossil-fuel combustion (27.3% of the total PM_2.5 burden), with coal contributing to over half. Other dominant global sources included residential (0.74 [0.52–0.95] million deaths; 19.2%), industrial (0.45 [0.32–0.58] million deaths; 11.7%), and energy (0.39 [0.28–0.51] million deaths; 10.2%) sectors. Our results show that regions with large anthropogenic contributions generally had the highest attributable deaths, suggesting substantial health benefits from replacing traditional energy sources.

The Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) is scheduled for launch in February 2020 to monitor air quality (AQ) at an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution from a geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) for the first time. With the development of UV–visible spectrometers at sub-nm spectral resolution and sophisticated retrieval algorithms, estimates of the column amounts of atmospheric pollutants (O₃, NO₂, SO₂, HCHO, CHOCHO, and aerosols) can be obtained. To date, all the UV–visible satellite missions monitoring air quality have been in low Earth orbit (LEO), allowing one to two observations per day. With UV–visible instruments on GEO platforms, the diurnal variations of these pollutants can now be determined. Details of the GEMS mission are presented, including instrumentation, scientific algorithms, predicted performance, and applications for air quality forecasts through data assimilation. GEMS will be on board the Geostationary Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite 2 (GEO-KOMPSAT-2) satellite series, which also hosts the Advanced Meteorological Imager (AMI) and Geostationary Ocean Color Imager 2 (GOCI-2). These three instruments will provide synergistic science products to better understand air quality, meteorology, the long-range transport of air pollutants, emission source distributions, and chemical processes. Faster sampling rates at higher spatial resolution will increase the probability of finding cloud-free pixels, leading to more observations of aerosols and trace gases than is possible from LEO. GEMS will be joined by NASA’s Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) and ESA’s Sentinel-4 to form a GEO AQ satellite constellation in early 2020s, coordinated by the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS).

Severe surface ozone pollution over major Chinese cities has become an emerging air quality concern, raising a new challenge for emission control measures in China. In this study, we explore the source contributions to surface daily maximum 8 h average (MDA8) ozone over China in 2016 and 2017, the 2 years with the highest surface ozone averaged over Chinese cities in record. We estimate the contributions of anthropogenic, background, and individual natural sources to surface ozone over China using the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model at $\mathrm{0.25}{}^{\circ }\times \mathrm{0.3125}{}^{\circ }$ horizontal resolution with the most up-to-date Chinese anthropogenic emission inventory. Model results are evaluated with concurrent surface ozone measurements at 169 cities over China and show generally good agreement. We find that background ozone (defined as ozone that would be present in the absence of all Chinese anthropogenic emissions) accounts for 90 % (49.4 ppbv) of the national March–April mean surface MDA8 ozone over China and 80 % (44.5 ppbv) for May–August. It includes large contributions from natural sources (80 % in March–April and 72 % in May–August). Among them, biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions enhance MDA8 ozone by more than 15 ppbv in eastern China during July–August, while lightning NO_x emissions and ozone transport from the stratosphere both lead to ozone enhancements of over 20 ppbv in western China during March–April. Over major Chinese city clusters, domestic anthropogenic sources account for about 30 % of the May–August mean surface MDA8 ozone and reach 39–73 ppbv (38 %–69 %) for days with simulated MDA8 ozone > 100 ppbv in the North China Plain, Fenwei Plain, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta city clusters. These high ozone episodes are usually associated with high temperatures, which induce large BVOC emissions and enhance ozone chemical production. Our results indicate that there would be no days with MDA8 ozone > 80 ppbv in these major Chinese cities in the absence of domestic anthropogenic emissions. We find that the 2017 ozone increases relative to 2016 are largely due to higher background ozone driven by hotter and drier weather conditions, while changes in domestic anthropogenic emissions alone would have led to ozone decreases in 2017. Meteorological conditions in 2017 favor natural source contributions (particularly soil NO_x and BVOC ozone enhancements) and ozone chemical production, increase the thermal decomposition of peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), and further decrease ozone dry deposition velocity. More stringent emission control measures are thus required to offset the adverse effects of unfavorable meteorology, such as high temperature, on surface ozone air quality.