Spaceborne monitoring of nitrogen oxides emissions from ships with TROPOMI

Summary

Nitrogen oxides are air pollutants, harming human and environmental health. The international shipping sector is one of the main contributors to its emissions. In recent years, stricter regulations on emissions from ships have been implemented. However, as ships often sail far from measurement infrastructure, the monitoring of emissions is challenging and the emission remain uncertain. In this thesis we studied how the satellite instrument TRROPOMI can contribute to the monitoring of said emissions. Besides improvements in the data quality of the instrument, the thesis presents studies on emission changes during COVID-19 and compares estimated emissions from individual ships to the regulations. We find, that despite stricter limits, newer ships emit more, especially when travelling with slow speed, questioning the effectiveness of the legislation. Lastly, we evaluated the possibility of using data from new and upcoming satellites in the future.