B066-0004
Origin and fluxes of nitrous oxide during ATom
Friday, 11 December 2020
Poster
Yenny Gonzalez Ramos1, Steven C Wofsy1, Roisin Commane2, Bruce C Daube1, Ethan Manninen1, J Barry McManus3, Kathryn McKain4, Charles A Brock5, James W Elkins6, Eric J Hintsa7, Fred L Moore6, Colm Sweeney8, Paul O Wennberg9, Karl D Froyd10, Jose L Jimenez11 and Pedro Campuzano Jost12, (1)Harvard University, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, MA, United States, (2)Columbia University in the City of New York, New York, NY, United States, (3)Aerodyne Research Inc., Billerica, MA, United States, (4)NOAA ESRL Global Monitoring Division, Boulder, CO, United States, (5)NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder, United States, (6)NOAA, Boulder, CO, United States, (7)Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, NOAA/ESRL Global Monitoring Division, Boulder, CO, United States, (8)NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (9)California Institute of Technology, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, Pasadena, CA, United States, (10)NOAA/CIRES, Boulder, CO, United States, (11)University of Colorado at Boulder, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and Department of Chemistry, Boulder, CO, United States, (12)University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
We present highly resolved N2O vertical profiles (1Hz, using a Quantum Cascade Laser Spectrometer) with nearly pole-to-pole coverage from the Atmospheric Tomography mission (ATom). We introduce a new spectral retrieval method to account for the pressure and temperature dependence of our QCLS spectrometer. We derive the accuracy of our N2O data by comparing with other instruments on board as well as with data from stations of the NOAA surface network.
During Atom, the variability of tropospheric N2O was mainly driven by the influence of stratospheric air depleted in N2O (~ 70 % of our data), especially at the middle and high latitudes. N2O showed a maximum close to the equator that extended from the surface up to 8 km altitude prompted by marine convection within the intertropical convergence zone.
Horizontal transport of biomass burning and anthropogenic emissions were the predominant contribution to the major enhancements observed in N2O (> 1ppb with respect the tropospheric N2O background, ~ 10 % of our data). The major N2O enhancements were observed in the Atlantic while intercepting airmasses from the African continent. An example of the impact of African emissions on the tropospheric column over the Atlantic is shown in Figure 1. The impact of biomass burning and industry emissions to the tropospheric N2O mixing ratios was analyzed using vertical profiles of several gas tracers and aerosol characterization.
