Determining air pollutant emission rates based on  mass  balance using airborne measurement data over the   Alberta oil sands operations

Gordon, M.; Li, S.-M.; Staebler, R.; Darlington, A.; Hayden, K.; O'Brien, J.; Wolde, M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-3745-2015

Articles | Volume 8, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-3745-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Special issue:

Atmospheric emissions from oil sands development and their...

https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-3745-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 8, issue 9

Research article

|

16 Sep 2015

Research article |

| 16 Sep 2015

Determining air pollutant emission rates based on mass balance using airborne measurement data over the Alberta oil sands operations

M. Gordon, S.-M. Li, R. Staebler, A. Darlington, K. Hayden, J. O'Brien, and M. Wolde

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Final revised paper (published on 16 Sep 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 11 May 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC C1401: 'Review of "Determining air pollutant emission rates..." by Gordon et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 03 Jun 2015
RC C1450: 'Review of "Determining air pollutant emission rates based on mass balance using airborne measurement data over the Alberta oil sands operations" by Gordon et al., submitted to AMT.', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 Jun 2015
RC C1457: 'Anonymous Referee #1', Anonymous Referee #1, 08 Jun 2015
SC C1698: 'Misgivings about uncrtainty analysis', Ian Faloona, 26 Jun 2015
- AC C1909: 'Response to Short Comment', Mark Gordon, 08 Jul 2015
AC C1908: 'Response to the Comments of All Reviewers', Mark Gordon, 08 Jul 2015
AC C1910: 'Revised Manuscript', Mark Gordon, 08 Jul 2015

Short summary

Aircraft-based measurements of air pollutants from sources in the Canadian oil sands were made during a summer intensive field campaign in 2013. This paper describes the top-down emission rate retrieval algorithm (TERRA) to determine facility emissions of pollutants, using SO2 and CH4 as examples. Uncertainty of the emission rates estimated with TERRA is estimated as less than 30%, which is primarily due to the unknown SO2 and CH4 mixing ratios near the surface below the lowest flight level.