SOLFEO – Spaceborne Observations over Latin America For Emission Optimization applications

South America hosts the Amazon rain forest, the largest source of natural hydrocarbons (HC) emitted into the atmosphere. However, the forest undergoes continuous pressure due to increasing needs for pasture and agricultural land. Next to this, large urban centers of South America face acute air quality problems. In this tense situation, it is important to closely monitor both the natural emissions released by the rainforest (hydrocarbons) and the rapidly changing anthropogenic emissions from agricultural activities (NH3 and NOx) and fossil fuel burning (NOx).

By using satellite observations combined with a state-of-the-art model representation of the relevant processes, we develop advanced inversion algorithms for the estimation of emissions of ammonia(NH3), NOx and hydrocarbons, providing both qualitative and quantitative biogenic and anthropogenic emissions. SOLFEO takes advantage of the fine spatial resolution of OMI (AURA), IASI (METOP) and TROPOMI (Sentinel 5p) data to improve emission estimates over a largely understudied region.