Bayesian inversion of HFC-134a emissions in southern China from a new AGAGE site: Results from an observing system simulation experiment

The abundance of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in the atmosphere is increasing and is of significant importance to the Earth's system. It is thus crucial to investigate the spatial distribution of HFC emissions. However, inversion modeling, a commonly used approach, is susceptible to errors from a-priori emissions, inversion grids, observations, and other parameters. In this study, we conduct Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) to evaluate the impact of inversion parameters on HFC emission estimates, focusing on HFC-134a at the newly established Xichong (XCG) AGAGE site in Shenzhen, China. We regard the EDGAR (v7) dataset as a reference for "true" emissions and simulate the "true" atmosphere using the GEOS-Chem model. Our OSSE indicates that conducting inversions in the medium-sensitivity region with source-receptor sensitivity larger than 6.0 (nmol mol−1)/(mol m−2 s−1) minimizes the bias between a-posteriori and "true" total emissions to 0.58 %–1.88 %. In the high-sensitivity region, enhancing the spatial resolution of inversion grids lowers this error from −27.07 % to +0.36 %. The accuracy of a-priori spatial distribution crucially influences that of the a-posteriori: the higher correlation coefficient between a-priori and "true" emissions, the better a-posteriori agree with the "true" emissions, as evidenced by a reduced root mean square error (RMSE) of the a-posteriori vs. "true" emissions from 1.44 × 10−9 g m−2 s−1 (GDP-based) to 8.78 × 10−10 g m−2 s−1 (VIIRS-based). Furthermore, selecting regularization parameters and balancing instrumental and a-priori errors are also important. Our OSSE setups allow for parameter testing during the inversion, offering a framework to assess the regional representativeness of future HFC measurement sites.