Nitrous oxide (N2O), a potent greenhouse gas and ozone depleting substance, plays a crucial role in the atmosphere. Anthropogenic emissions from agriculture contribute to a rising trend in global N2O emissions and atmospheric concentrations. However, due to insufficient direct observations, regional N2O emissions derived in bottom-up and top-down studies are highly uncertain. The U.S. Midwest is one of the most intensive agriculture areas worldwide and hence may contribute significantly to the observed trend. Recent top-down studies suggest that bottom-up estimates underestimate agricultural emissions in that area by up to an order of magnitude. Here we quantify nitrous oxide emissions in the Midwest in October 2017 and June-July 2019 with a top-down approach. Unique continuous aircraft-based measurements of N2O conducted during the ACT-America campaign together with forward WRF-Chem model simulations are used to scale the EDGAR inventory thus quantifying emissions. On average we had to upscale October 2017 and June-July 2019 agricultural EDGAR 4.3.2/5.0 emissions by a factor of 6.3/3.5 and 11.4/9.9, resulting in 0.42 nmol m-2 s-1 and 1.06 nmol m-2 s-1 emissions in the Midwest, respectively. Finally, calculations of direct soil N2O emissions from the DayCent biogeochemical model are compared to our estimates.

In the last decade, much work has been done to better understand methane (CH4) emissions from the oil and gas (O&G) industry in the United States. Ethane (C2H6), a gas that is co-emitted with thermogenic sources of CH4 , is emitted in the US almost entirely by the O&G sector. In this study, we perform an inverse analysis on 300 hours of atmospheric boundary layer C2H6 measurements to estimate C2H6 emissions from the US O&G sector. Measurements were collected from 2017-2019 as part of the Atmospheric Carbon and Transport (ACT) America aircraft campaign and encompass much of the central and eastern United States. We find that for the fall, winter, and spring campaigns, C2H6 data consistently exceeds values that would be expected based on EPA O&G leak rate estimates. C2H6 observations from the summer 2019 dataset show significantly lower C2H6 enhancements in the southcentral region that cannot be reconciled with data from the other three seasons, either due to complex meteorological conditions or a temporal shift in the emissions. Converting the fall, winter, and spring season posterior C2H6 emissions estimate to an inventory of O&G CH4 emissions, we estimate that O&G CH4 emissions are larger than EPA inventory values by more than 50%. Uncertainties in the gas composition data limit the effectiveness of using C2H6 as a proxy for O&G CH4 emissions. These limits could be resolved retroactively by increasing the availability of industry-collected gas composition data.

The Atmospheric Carbon and Transport (ACT) – America NASA Earth Venture Suborbital Mission set out to improve regional atmospheric greenhouse gas (GHG) inversions by exploring the intersection of the strong GHG fluxes and vigorous atmospheric transport that occurs within the midlatitudes. Two research aircraft instrumented with remote and in situ sensors to measure GHG mole fractions, associated trace gases, and atmospheric state variables collected 1140.7 flight hours of research data, distributed across 305 individual aircraft sorties, coordinated within 121 research flight days, and spanning five, six-week seasonal flight campaigns in the central and eastern United States. Flights sampled 31 synoptic sequences, including fair weather and frontal conditions, at altitudes ranging from the atmospheric boundary layer to the upper free troposphere. The observations were complemented with global and regional GHG flux and transport model ensembles. We found that midlatitude weather systems contain large spatial gradients in GHG mole fractions, in patterns that were consistent as a function of season and altitude. We attribute these patterns to a combination of regional terrestrial fluxes and inflow from the continental boundaries. These observations, when segregated according to altitude and air mass, provide a variety of quantitative insights into the realism of regional CO2 and CH4 fluxes and atmospheric GHG transport realizations. The ACT-America data set and ensemble modeling methods provide benchmarks for the development of atmospheric inversion systems. As global and regional atmospheric inversions incorporate ACT-America’s findings and methods, we anticipate these systems will produce increasingly accurate and precise sub-continental GHG flux estimates.

The ACT-America project is a NASA Earth Venture Suborbital-2 mission designed to study the transport and fluxes of greenhouse gases. The open and freely available ACT-America datasets provide airborne in-situ measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane, trace gases, aerosols, clouds, and meteorological properties, airborne remote sensing measurements of aerosol backscatter, atmospheric boundary layer height and columnar content of atmospheric carbon dioxide, tower-based measurements, and modeled atmospheric mole fractions and regional carbon fluxes of greenhouse gases over the Central and Eastern United States. We conducted 121 research flights during five campaigns in four seasons during 2016-2019 over three regions of the US (Mid-Atlantic, Midwest and South) using two NASA research aircraft (B-200 and C-130). We performed three flight patterns (fair weather, frontal crossings, and OCO-2 underflights) and collected more than 1,140 hours of airborne measurements via level-leg flights in the atmospheric boundary layer, lower, and upper free troposphere and vertical profiles spanning these altitudes. We also merged various airborne in-situ measurements onto a common standard sampling interval, which brings coherence to the data, creates geolocated data products, and makes it much easier for the users to perform holistic analysis of the ACT-America data products. Here, we report on detailed information of datasets collected, and the workflow for datasets including storage and processing of the quality controlled and quality assured harmonized observations, and their archival and formatting for users. Finally, we provide some important information on the dissemination of data products including metadata and highlights of applications of datasets for future investigations.

Atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O) is, after carbon dioxide and methane, the third most important long-lived anthropogenic greenhouse gas in terms of radiative forcing. Since preindustrial times a rising trend in the global N2O concentrations is observed. Anthropogenic emissions of N2O, mainly from agricultural activity, contribute considerably to this trend. Sparse observational constraints have made it difficult to quantify these emissions. The few studies on top-down approaches in the U.S. that exist are mainly based on Lagrangian models and ground-based measurements. They all propose a significant underestimation of anthropogenic N2O emission sources in established inventories, such as the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR). In this study we quantify anthropogenic N2O emissions in the Midwest of the U.S., an area of high agricultural activity. In the course of the Atmospheric Carbon and Transport – America (ACT-America) campaign spanning from summer 2016 to summer 2019, an extensive dataset over four seasons has been collected including in-situ N2O aircraft based measurements in the lower and middle troposphere onboard NASA’s C-130 and B-200 aircraft. During fall 2017 and summer 2019 we conducted measurements onboard the NASA-C130 with a Quantum-Cascade-Laser-Spectrometer (QCLS) and on both aircraft over the whole campaign flask measurements (NOAA) were collected. More than 300 joint flight hours were conducted and more than 500 flask samples were collected over the U.S. Midwest. The QCLS system collected continuous N2O data for approximately 60 flight hours in this region. The Eulerian Weather Research and Forecasting model with chemistry enabled (WRF-Chem) is being used to quantify regional agricultural N2O emissions using the spatial characteristics of these atmospheric N2O mole fraction observations. The numerical simulations enable potential surface emission distributions to be compared to our airborne measurements, and source estimates can be adjusted to minimize the differences, thus quantifying N2O sources. These results are then compared to emission rates in the EDGAR inventory.

The U.S. Midwest, with its intensive agriculture, is a prominent source of nitrous oxide (N2O) but top-down and bottom-up N2O emission estimates differ significantly. We quantify Midwest N2O emissions by combining observations from the Atmospheric Carbon and Transport-America campaign with model simulations to scale the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR). In October 2017 we increased agricultural EDGAR version 4.3.2/5.0 emissions by a factor of 6.3±4.6/3.5±2.7, resulting in Midwest N2O emissions of 0.42±0.28 nmol m-2 s-1. In June/July 2019, a period when extreme flooding was occurring in the Midwest, EDGAR was increased by a factor of 11.4±6.6/9.9±5.7, resulting in N2O emissions of 1.06±0.57 nmol m-2 s-1. Agricultural emissions estimated with the process-based model DayCent (Daily version of the CENTURY ecosystem model) were larger than in EDGAR but still substantially smaller than our estimates. Due to the complexity of N2O emissions, further studies are necessary to fully characterize Midwest emissions.