The COVID‐19 epidemic has substantially limited human activities and affected anthropogenic emissions. In this work, daily NO_x emissions are inferred using a regional data assimilation system and hourly surface NO₂ measurement over China. The results show that because of the coronavirus outbreak, NO_x emissions across the whole mainland China dropped sharply after 31 January, began to rise slightly in certain areas after 10 February, and gradually recover across the country after 20 February. Compared with the emissions before the outbreak, NO_x emissions fell by more than 60% and ~30% in many large cities and most small to medium cities, respectively. Overall, NO_x emissions were reduced by 36% over China, which were mainly contributed by transportation. Evaluations show that the inverted changes over eastern China are credible, whereas those in western China might be underestimated. These findings are of great significance for exploring the reduction potential of NO_x emissions in China.

A global gridded net ecosystem exchange (NEE) of CO₂ dataset is vital in global and regional carbon cycle studies. Top-down atmospheric inversion is one of the major methods to estimate the global NEE; however, the existing global NEE datasets generated through inversion from conventional CO₂ observations have large uncertainties in places where observational data are sparse. Here, by assimilating the GOSAT ACOS v9 XCO₂ product, we generate a 10-year (2010–2019) global monthly terrestrial NEE dataset using the Global Carbon Assimilation System, version 2 (GCASv2), which is named GCAS2021. It includes gridded ($\mathrm{1}{}^{\circ }\times \mathrm{1}{}^{\circ }$ ), globally, latitudinally, and regionally aggregated prior and posterior NEE and ocean (OCN) fluxes and prescribed wildfire (FIRE) and fossil fuel and cement (FFC) carbon emissions. Globally, the decadal mean NEE is $-\mathrm{3.73}\pm \mathrm{0.52}$ PgC yr⁻¹, with an interannual amplitude of 2.73 PgC yr⁻¹. Combining the OCN flux and FIRE and FFC emissions, the net biosphere flux (NBE) and atmospheric growth rate (AGR) as well as their inter-annual variabilities (IAVs) agree well with the estimates of the Global Carbon Budget 2020. Regionally, our dataset shows that eastern North America, the Amazon, the Congo Basin, Europe, boreal forests, southern China, and Southeast Asia are carbon sinks, while the western United States, African grasslands, Brazilian plateaus, and parts of South Asia are carbon sources. In the TRANSCOM land regions, the NBEs of temperate N. America, northern Africa, and boreal Asia are between the estimates of CMS-Flux NBE 2020 and CT2019B, and those in temperate Asia, Europe, and Southeast Asia are consistent with CMS-Flux NBE 2020 but significantly different from CT2019B. In the RECCAP2 regions, except for Africa and South Asia, the NBEs are comparable with the latest bottom-up estimate of Ciais et al. (2021). Compared with previous studies, the IAVs and seasonal cycles of NEE of this dataset could clearly reflect the impacts of extreme climates and large-scale climate anomalies on the carbon flux. The evaluations also show that the posterior CO₂ concentrations at remote sites and on a regional scale, as well as on vertical CO₂ profiles in the Asia-Pacific region, are all consistent with independent CO₂ measurements from surface flask and aircraft CO₂ observations, indicating that this dataset captures surface carbon fluxes well. We believe that this dataset can contribute to regional- or national-scale carbon cycle and carbon neutrality assessment and carbon dynamics research. The dataset can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5829774 (Jiang, 2022).

Satellite retrievals of the column-averaged dry air mole fractions of CO₂ (XCO₂) could help to improve carbon flux estimation due to their good spatial coverage. In this study, in order to assimilate the GOSAT (Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite) XCO₂ retrievals, the Global Carbon Assimilation System (GCAS) is upgraded with new assimilation algorithms, procedures, a localization scheme, and a higher assimilation parameter resolution. This upgraded system is referred to as GCASv2. Based on this new system, the global terrestrial ecosystem (BIO) and ocean (OCN) carbon fluxes from 1 May 2009 to 31 December 2015 are constrained using the GOSAT ACOS (Atmospheric CO₂ Observations from Space) XCO₂ retrievals (Version 7.3). The posterior carbon fluxes from 2010 to 2015 are independently evaluated using CO₂ observations from 52 surface flask sites. The results show that the posterior carbon fluxes could significantly improve the modeling of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, with global mean bias decreases from a prior value of 1.6 ± 1.8 ppm to −0.5 ± 1.8 ppm. The uncertainty reduction (UR) of the global BIO flux is 17 %, and the highest monthly regional UR could reach 51 %. Globally, the mean annual BIO and OCN carbon sinks and their interannual variations inferred in this study are very close to the estimates of CarbonTracker 2017 (CT2017) during the study period, and the inferred mean atmospheric CO₂ growth rate and its interannual changes are also very close to the observations. Regionally, over the northern lands, the strongest carbon sinks are seen in temperate North America, followed by Europe, boreal Asia, and temperate Asia; in the tropics, there are strong sinks in tropical South America and tropical Asia, but a very weak sink in Africa. This pattern is significantly different from the estimates of CT2017, but the estimated carbon sinks for each continent and some key regions like boreal Asia and the Amazon are comparable or within the range of previous bottom-up estimates. The inversion also changes the interannual variations in carbon fluxes in most TransCom land regions, which have a better relationship with the changes in severe drought area (SDA) or leaf area index (LAI), or are more consistent with previous estimates for the impact of drought. These results suggest that the GCASv2 system works well with the GOSAT XCO₂ retrievals and shows good performance with respect to estimating the surface carbon fluxes; meanwhile, our results also indicate that the GOSAT XCO₂ retrievals could help to better understand the interannual variations in regional carbon fluxes.

China has implemented active clean air policies in recent years, and the spatiotemporal patterns of major pollutant emissions have changed substantially. In this study, we construct a regional air pollution data assimilation system based on the WRF/CMAQ model and ensemble Kalman filter algorithm to quantitatively optimize gridded CO emissions using hourly surface CO measurements over China. The Multi‐resolution Emission Inventory of China CO emission inventories in December 2012 and 2016 are treated as prior emissions, and the CO emissions in December 2013 and 2017 are optimized using the CO observations of December of 2013 and 2017, respectively. The results show that in both periods, assimilation of CO observations significantly improves the CO simulations and emission estimates. Assimilation increases the CO emissions in most areas of mainland China, especially in northern China, and the spatial patterns of the increases in the two periods are similar. Overall, the posterior CO emissions in December 2017 are 17% lower than those in December 2013. Large emission decreases are mainly found in most key urban areas and developed regions, and emission increases are mainly located in their surrounding areas and certain central and western regions, which might reflect the emission migration from developed regions or urban areas to developing regions or surrounding areas. These changes are not found in the prior emissions but are basically consistent with the emission control strategies and industrial transformation and upgrade phenomena in recent years, indicating that our CO assimilation system could successfully capture the temporal and spatial variations.

Sudden mega natural gas leaks of two Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea (Denmark) occurred from late September to early October 2022, releasing large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. We inferred the methane emissions of this event based on surface in situ observations using two inversion methods and two meteorological reanalysis datasets, supplemented with satellite-based observations. We conclude that approximately 220 ± 30 Gg of methane was released from September 26 to October 1, 2022.