The Mediterranean Intensive Oxidant Study, performed in the summer of 2001, uncovered air pollution layers from the surface to an altitude of 15 kilometers. In the boundary layer, air pollution standards are exceeded throughout the region, caused by West and East European pollution from the north. Aerosol particles also reduce solar radiation penetration to the surface, which can suppress precipitation. In the middle troposphere, Asian and to a lesser extent North American pollution is transported from the west. Additional Asian pollution from the east, transported from the monsoon in the upper troposphere, crosses the Mediterranean tropopause, which pollutes the lower stratosphere at middle latitudes.

[1] In this paper we present simulations with a Lagrangian particle dispersion model to study the intercontinental transport of pollution from North America during an aircraft measurement campaign over Europe. The model was used for both the flight planning and a detailed source analysis after the campaign, which is described here with examples from two episodes. Forward calculations of emission tracers from North America, Europe, and Asia were made in order to understand the transport processes. Both episodes were preceded by stagnant conditions over North America, leading to the accumulation of pollutants in the North American boundary layer. Both anthropogenic sources and, to a lesser extent, forest fire emissions contributed to this pollution, which was then exported by warm conveyor belts to the middle and upper troposphere, where it was transported rapidly to Europe. Concentrations of many trace gases (CO, NO y , CO 2 , acetone, and several volatile organic compounds; O 3 in one case) and of ambient atmospheric ions measured aboard the research aircraft were clearly enhanced in the pollution plumes compared to the conditions outside the plumes. Backward simulations with the particle model were introduced as an indispensable tool for a more detailed analysis of the plume's source region. They make trajectory analyses (which, to date, were mainly used to interpret aircraft measurement data) obsolete. Using an emission inventory, we could decompose the tracer mixing ratios at the receptors (i.e., along the flight tracks) into contributions from every grid cell of the inventory. For both plumes we found that emission sources contributing to the tracer concentrations over Europe were distributed over large areas in North America. In one case, sources in California, Texas, and Florida contributed almost equally, and smaller contributions were also made by other sources located between the Yucatan Peninsula and Canada. In the other case, sources in eastern North America, including moderate contributions from forest fires, were most important. The plume's maximum was mainly caused by anthropogenic emissions from the New York area. To our knowledge, this is the first case reported where a pollution plume from a megacity was reliably detected over another continent.

A new in situ instrument (LOPAP: long path absorption photometer) to measure gaseous nitrous acid (HONO) using wet chemical sampling and photometric detection has been developed. This instrument is aimed to overcome the known problems with current HONO measurement techniques and was designed to be a cheap, sensitive, compact, and continuouslyworking HONO monitorfor ambient air measurements in the troposphere or for measurements of higher concentrations e.g. in smog chambers, in exhaust gases, and in indoor environments. Laboratory investigations were carried outto characterize the instrument components with respect to collection efficiency, optimum dye formation, optimum detection, and interfering species. Detection limits ranging from approximately 3 to 50 pptV have been obtained with response times from 4 to 1.5 min, respectively, using different instrument parameters. The accuracy of the measurements is in the range between +/-(10-15)%. The validation of the instrument was performed in the laboratory for HONO concentrations of 3 and 30 ppbV using ion chromatography and with a DOAS (differential optical absorption spectrometer) instrument in a large outdoor smog chamber in the range from 0.1 to 20 ppbV. The deviations were well within the errors of the measurements; however, when comparing the data with the DOAS instrument systematically higher values were found with the LOPAP instrument.

Abstract. The first global tropospheric forecasts of O3 and its precursors have been used in the daily flight planning of field measurement campaigns. The 3-D chemistry-transport model MATCH-MPIC is driven by meteorological data from a weather center (NCEP) to produce daily 3-day forecasts of the global distributions of O3 and related gases, as well as regional CO tracers. This paper describes the forecast system and its use in three field campaigns, MINOS, CONTRACE and INDOEX. An overview is given of the forecasts by MATCH-MPIC and by three other chemical weather forecast models (EURAD, ECHAM, and FLEXPART), focusing on O3 and CO. Total CO and regional CO tracers were found to be the most valuable gases for flight planning, due to their relatively well-defined anthropogenic source regions and lifetimes of one to a few months. CO was in good agreement with the observations on nearly all the flights (generally  r > 0.7, and the relative RMS differences for the deviations from the means was less than 20%). In every case in which the chemical weather forecasts were primarily responsible for the flight plans, the targeted features were observed. Three forecasted phenomena are discussed in detail: outflow from Asia observed in the Mediterranean upper troposphere during MINOS, outflow from North America observed in the middle troposphere over northern Europe during CONTRACE, and the location of the "chemical ITCZ'' over the Indian Ocean during INDOEX. In particular it is shown that although intercontinental pollution plumes such as those observed during MINOS and CONTRACE occur repeatedly during the months around the campaigns, their frequency is sufficiently low (~10--30% of the time) that global chemical weather forecasts are important for enabling them to be observed during limited-duration field campaigns. The MATCH-MPIC chemical weather forecasts, including an interface for making customized figures from the output, are available for community use via http://www.mpch-mainz.mpg.de/~lawrence/forecasts.html.

During the airborne CONTRACE field experiment carried out in November 2001 a number of polluted layers of North American (NA) origin were observed in the free troposphere over Europe. For the first time, forecasts from a Lagrangian particle dispersion model were used to predict the NA pollution events and to direct a research aircraft very precisely into these polluted layers above Europe. Two of the NA pollution events are investigated here: one in detail (case 19 November) and a second more briefly (case 22 November). An exceptional result was that the first pollution plume could be traced with the model and trace gas measurements (airborne and surface) for a period of one week, from the source region over the eastern United States to its decay over the Alps. On 14–15 November a warm conveyor belt lifted the leading edge of the pollution plume over the eastern United States to the mid troposphere where it remained during the transport over the Atlantic. On 19 November the plume was intersected with the research aircraft over Scandinavia at an altitude between 2 and 4 km. Elevated CO (170), O3 (53), NOy (1.1), acetone (5.0), and SO2 (2.6) mixing ratios (nmol/mol) were measured. A positive O3-CO correlation was observed in the plume. The observations indicate that the enhanced levels of ozone were already produced near the source region over the eastern United States and not during the transit. In the next days one branch of the plume then turned to the south and descended to ground level over the Alpine region. Elevated O3 (54 nmol mol 1) and CO (168 nmol/mol) were observed at the mountain site Zugspitze (southern Germany) during two days. At the Arosa Alpine site in Switzerland the highest daily ozone means of November 2001 were observed during this event