A086-0007
Chemical Patterns Controlling Tropospheric Ozone and Methane: The ATom Dataset
Thursday, 10 December 2020
Poster
Hao Guo1, Clare Marie Flynn2, Michael J Prather3, Sarah Strode4, Stephen D Steenrod4, Louisa K Emmons5, Forrest Lacey6, Arlene M Fiore7, Gustavo J P Correa7, Lee T Murray8, Glenn M Wolfe4, Michelle J Kim9, John D Crounse9, Glenn S Diskin10, Joshua P DiGangi11, Bruce C Daube12, Roisin Commane13, Kathryn McKain14,15, Thomas B Ryerson16, Chelsea R Thompson17, Thomas F Hanisco18, Donald Ray Blake19, Nicola J Blake19, Eric C Apel5, Rebecca S Hornbrook5, James W Elkins20, Eric J Hintsa21, Fred L Moore20 and Steven C Wofsy12, (1)University of California Irvine, Earth System Science Department, Irvine, CA, United States, (2)University of California, Irvine, Department of Earth System Science, Irvine, CA, United States, (3)Univ California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States, (4)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (5)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (6)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (7)Columbia University, Palisades, NY, United States, (8)University of Rochester, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Rochester, NY, United States, (9)California Institute of Technology, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, Pasadena, CA, United States, (10)NASA Langley Research Ctr, Hampton, VA, United States, (11)NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, United States, (12)Harvard University, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, MA, United States, (13)Columbia University in the City of New York, New York, NY, United States, (14)NOAA ESRL Global Monitoring Division, Boulder, CO, United States, (15)NOAA, Earth System Research Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (16)NOAA ESRL Chemical Sciences Division, Boulder, CO, United States, (17)Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (18)NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (19)University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States, (20)NOAA, Boulder, CO, United States, (21)Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, NOAA/ESRL Global Monitoring Division, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
The Atmospheric Tomography Experiment (ATom) provides unique measurements of atmospheric composition on four meridional, profiling transects of the central Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, one in each season. These observations provide most of the key chemical constituents involved in the photochemical reactions controlling the greenhouse gases ozone and methane. Flight paths are preset to give a representative, objective sampling of air parcels in the troposphere (0.5 to 12 km) where most of the photochemical loss of ozone and methane occurs. This talk presents the statistical distributions and covariation of the key species from ATom and compares them with output from six global chemistry models. The reactivity (e.g., methane loss, ozone production and loss) of each parcel is used in these model-measurement evaluations to place emphasis on the location and composition of air parcels that matter most. Also, all four deployments (ATom 1-4) were analyzed to identify seasonal changes for reactivities. ATom analysis points to specific model failings in terms of the frequency of occurrence of these photochemically 'hot' air parcels in the remote troposphere and possibly identifies a common cause for the overestimation of methane loss in most all models as well as the distinct regions of ozone production (upper troposphere) and loss (lower troposphere).
