Carbon monoxide budget in the northern hemisphere

Abstract

To improve urban air quality the major industrialized nations of the West took steps during the 1970s and 1980s to reduce carbon monoxide (CO) emissions from automobiles and other industrial sources. Overall, CO/CO2 emission ratios from the mix of fossil fuel combustion sources have been reduced by about half during 1976–1990. Also, the tropospheric abundance of hydroxyl radical (OH), which is the main sink for CO, is proposed to have increased globally by about 1.0±0.8% yr−1 [Prinn et al., 1992]. We use a simple two‐box model to examine the impact of shrinking emissions and increasing OH on the global abundance of CO. We find that these factors contribute about equally in reducing CO levels in the Northern Hemisphere troposphere by about 1.8±0.8 ppb yr−1 on average. Copyright 1994 by the American Geophysical Union.