Production and transport of NO x by convection is critical as it serves as a precursor to tropospheric ozone, an important greenhouse gas. Lightning serves as the largest source of nitrogen oxides (NO x = NO + NO 2 ) to the upper troposphere (UT) and is one of the largest natural sources of NO x . Interest is placed on the vertical advection of NO x because its lifetime increases to several days in the UT compared to roughly 3 hr in the lower troposphere and boundary layer. Thus, lightning can play an important role in ozone production within the UT. However, the amount of NO x produced per flash and NO x advection in storms remain uncertain. This study investigates lightning NO x (LNO x ) production and transport processes in anomalous (midlevel positive charge) and normal polarity (midlevel negative charge) thunderstorms by advecting parcels containing LNO x from the flash channels of over 5,600 lightning flashes observed during the Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3) field campaign. Results reveal that most flash channels occur near 6-8 km in the normal polarity thunderstorms and 5-6 km within anomalous polarity thunderstorms. Larger flash rates and stronger updrafts in anomalous storms result in considerably larger LNO x mixing ratios (peaks of 0.75-1.75 ppb) in the UT compared to normal polarity storms (peaks < 0.5 ppb). A slightly lower mean flash LNO x production was also found among all five storms in this study (storm mean values of 72-158 moles per flash) compared to previous estimates, which generally parameterize LNO x by flash rate rather than flash count.
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