Data for Global variability in the detectability of power plant NO$_2$ plumes from space

This repository contains the data for the paper "Global variability in the detectability of power plant NO2 plumes from space". The paper presents the first global, data-driven analysis of power plant NO2 plume visibility from space. Using TROPOMI observations over 6,000 of the world's highest-emitting power plants and hourly CEMS data for 500 U.S. plants, we develop an automated algorithm that labels plumes and attributes them to their sources with 98% accuracy. We then train a machine learning model to predict plume detectability from environmental, meteorological, and observational variables (F1 score > 0.65, AUC > 0.8). Out of 25 variables, we find that NOx emission rate, surface albedo, wind speed, and sensor zenith angle jointly explain much of the detection variability. All of the data used in the paper is available. processed U.S. power plants: us-power-plant-list.csv processed global power plants: global-power-plant-list.csv world cities: world-cities.csv processed U.S. TROPOMI observations with corresponding variables: global-tropomi-observation-with-variables.csv processed global TROPOMI observations with corresponding variables: us-tropomi-observation-with-variables.csv ERA5 data with the following variables used in the paper could be downloaded at (U.S. 2019-2024, Global 2018): ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present. Temperature TOA incident solar radiation Total column water vapour TROPOMI data with the following variables used in the paper could be downloaded at (U.S. 2019-2024, Global 2018): US, Global. A sample file is: S5P_OFFL_L2__NO2____20220726T064118_20220726T082247_24784_03_020400_20220727T224455.nc. surface altitude surface altitude precision surface classification surface pressure surface albedo surface albedo nitrogendioxide window cloud pressure crb cloud fraction crb cloud albedo crb scene albedo apparent scene pressure snow ice flag aerosol index 354 388 eastward wind northward wind scaled small pixel variance sensor altitude sensor azimuth angle solar azimuth angle sensor zenith angle solar zenith angle