Detection of Anthropogenic CO(2) Emission Signatures with TanSat CO(2) and with Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor (S5P) NO(2) Measurements: First Results

China’s first carbon dioxide (CO(2)) measurement satellite mission, TanSat, was launched in December 2016. This paper introduces the first attempt to detect anthropogenic CO(2) emission signatures using CO(2) observations from TanSat and NO(2) measurements from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) onboard the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor (S5P) satellite. We focus our analysis on two selected cases in Tangshan, China and Tokyo, Japan. We found that the TanSat XCO(2) measurements have the capability to capture the anthropogenic variations in the plume and have spatial patterns similar to that of the TROPOMI NO(2) observations. The linear fit between TanSat XCO(2) and TROPOMI NO(2) indicates the CO(2)-to-NO(2) ratio of 0.8 × 10(−16) ppm (molec cm(−2))(−1) in Tangshan and 2.3 × 10(−16) ppm (molec cm(−2))(−1) in Tokyo. Our results align with the CO(2)-to-NO(x) emission ratios obtained from the EDGAR v6 emission inventory. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at 10.1007/s00376-022-2237-5.