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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-1499</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Do GEMS geostationary satellite observations of tropospheric NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; always improve NO&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; emission estimates and related air quality modelling?</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Yao</surname>
<given-names>Fei</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8327-3252</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Palmer</surname>
<given-names>Paul I.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1487-0969</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Xiaolin</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6772-0350</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Yi</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lee</surname>
<given-names>Gitaek T.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9269-9482</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff6">
<sup>6</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Haolin</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8783-3782</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Feng</surname>
<given-names>Liang</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Henze</surname>
<given-names>Daven K.</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff7">
<sup>7</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Park</surname>
<given-names>Rokjin J.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8922-0234</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff6">
<sup>6</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>China-UK Low Carbon College, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 201306, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>National Centre for Earth Observation, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FF, United Kingdom</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3FF, United Kingdom</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>Hubei Key Laboratory of Regional Ecology and Environmental Change, School of Geography and Information Engineering,  China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff6">
<label>6</label>
<addr-line>School of Earth and Environmental Science, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff7">
<label>7</label>
<addr-line>Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>01</day>
<month>04</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>26</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Fei Yao et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1499/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1499/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1499/egusphere-2026-1499.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1499/egusphere-2026-1499.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Satellite observations of atmospheric composition from low Earth orbit (LEO) have significantly advanced our understanding of global tropospheric chemistry; however, their 12-hour overpass cadence limits the attribution of rapid compositional changes. The launch of the Korean Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) in 2020 heralded the beginning of continuous spaceborne monitoring of atmospheric composition during sunlit hours across Asia, allowing researchers to track atmospheric variability in real-time from a geostationary perspective. We assess the added value of GEMS observations of tropospheric NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; to estimate monthly emissions of NO&lt;em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;x&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt; across Asia compared with the information provided by the equivalent instrument in LEO. We use the adjoint of the GEOS-Chem atmospheric chemistry transport model to infer NO&lt;em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;x&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt; emissions, comparing estimates using the full set of GEMS tropospheric NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; data against a surrogate LEO dataset created by subsampling the GEMS data at 13:45 local time (Korea Standard Time, KST). We find that the benefits of assimilating high-frequency GEMS observations are most significant during non-summer months (September&amp;minus;May), when elevated NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; concentrations and pronounced diurnal variability provide strong constraints on emission estimates. During this period, NO&lt;em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;x&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt; emission estimates derived from the full GEMS record deviate substantially from LEO-proxy results, with differences of 0.2&amp;minus;52.6 GgN month&lt;sup&gt;&amp;minus;1&lt;/sup&gt;, corresponding to 0.02&amp;minus;5.06 % of the &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; emissions. These differences further propagate into widespread adjustments in modelled ozone, hydroxyl radicals, and other secondary species, with evaluation against independent &lt;em&gt;in situ&lt;/em&gt; measurements showing that GEMS-inferred emission estimates offer comparable or superior performance particularly in regions where the differences are most pronounced. In contrast, we find that during summer months (June&amp;minus;August), low NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels likely introduce retrieval uncertainties that challenge the data assimilation framework in which only anthropogenic NO&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; sources are optimised, leading to negligible or even detrimental impacts on our ability to estimate NO&lt;em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;x&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt; emissions.</p>
</abstract>
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<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Centre for Earth Observation</funding-source>
<award-id>#NE/R016518/1</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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