A225-0003
In situ measurements of ammonia in plumes emitted from wildfires and agricultural fires in the US

Wednesday, 16 December 2020
Poster
Laura Tomsche1,2, Tomas Mikoviny3, John B Nowak4, Felix Piel3,5, Pedro Campuzano Jost6,7, Demetrios Pagonis8, Benjamin Nault7,9, Hongyu Guo7,8, Melinda Schueneman8, Jose L Jimenez8, Hannah Halliday10, Glenn S Diskin11, Joshua P DiGangi4 and Wisthaler Armin3,12, (1)Universities Space Research Association Columbia, Columbia, MD, United States, (2)NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, United States, (3)University of Oslo, Department of Chemistry, Oslo, Norway, (4)NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, United States, (5)IONICON Analytik GmbH, Innsbruck, Austria, (6)University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (7)Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, CO, United States, (8)University of Colorado at Boulder, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and Department of Chemistry, Boulder, CO, United States, (9)University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (10)US Environmental Protection Agency Research Triangle Park, Durham, NC, United States, (11)NASA Langley Research Ctr, Hampton, VA, United States, (12)University of Innsbruck, Institut für Ionenphysik und Angewandte Physik, Innsbruck, Austria
Abstract:
Emissions of trace gases and particles from fires have a major impact on climate, visibility, air quality, and public health. Biomass burning emissions include reactive nitrogen gases, among which ammonia (NH3) plays a prominent role. NH3 is a short-lived gas that acts as precursor for secondary inorganic aerosols. This process is still poorly constrained in downwind fire plumes.

In summer 2019, NASA and NOAA carried out the joint airborne FIREX-AQ (Fire Influence on Regional to global Environments and Air Quality) mission over the continental US to sample plumes from wildfires and agricultural fires. On board the NASA DC-8, we used a modified PTR-ToF-MS instrument for measuring NH3 in situ and at high time resolution. Over the course of the mission, we collected a large set of NH3 data in plumes emitted from fires differing in fuel type and burning stage. Herein, we will present the measured NH3 emissions ratios and factors, compare them with the literature, and investigate the dependence of NH3 emissions on fuel type and burning conditions.

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