Nitrogen oxides and PAN in plumes from boreal fires during  ARCTAS-B and their impact on ozone: an integrated analysis of  aircraft and satellite observations

Alvarado, M. J.; Logan, Jennifer A.; Mao, J.; Apel, E. C.; Riemer, D. D.; Blake, Donald R.; Cohen, R. C.; Min, K.-E.; Perring, A. E.; Browne, E. C.; Wooldridge, P. J.; Diskin, G. S.; Sachse, G. W.; Fuelberg, Henry E.; Sessions, W. R.; Harrigan, D. L.; Huey, G.; Liao, J.; Case-Hanks, A.; Jimenez, José L.; Cubison, M. J.; Vay, S. A.; Weinheimer, A. J.; Knapp, D. J.; Montzka, D. D.; Flocke, Frank; Pollack, I. B.; Wennberg, P. O.; Kürten, Andreas; Crounse, J. D.; Clair, J. M. St; Wisthaler, Armin; Mikoviny, Tomáš; Yantosca, Robert M.; Carouge, C.; Sager, Philippe Le

doi:10.5194/acp-10-9739-2010

Cited by 243 publications

(322 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Boreal forest fires are also an important source of PAN and, due to their proximity to the Arctic, plumes can be transported to high latitudes during the spring and summer months (Brock et al, 2011;Singh et al, 2010). Whilst little O 3 production appears to occur close to boreal fires (Alvarado et al, 2010;Paris et al, 2010), several recent studies have shown O 3 production downwind from boreal fires in the Arctic during the summer months (Wespes et al, 2012;Parrington et al, 2012;Thomas et al, 2013). Nevertheless, O 3 production is higher in air masses influenced by anthropogenic emissions.…”

Section: Arcticmentioning

confidence: 96%

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

et al. 2015

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Abstract. Ozone holds a certain fascination in atmospheric science. It is ubiquitous in the atmosphere, central to tropospheric oxidation chemistry, yet harmful to human and ecosystem health as well as being an important greenhouse gas. It is not emitted into the atmosphere but is a byproduct of the very oxidation chemistry it largely initiates. Much effort is focused on the reduction of surface levels of ozone owing to its health and vegetation impacts, but recent efforts to achieve reductions in exposure at a country scale have proved difficult to achieve owing to increases in background ozone at the zonal hemispheric scale. There is also a growing realisation that the role of ozone as a short-lived climate pollutant could be important in integrated air quality climate change mitigation. This review examines current understanding of the processes regulating tropospheric ozone at global to local scales from both measurements and models. It takes the view that knowledge across the scales is important for dealing with air quality and climate change in a synergistic manner. The review shows that there remain a number of clear challenges for ozone such as explaining surface trends, incorporating new chemical understanding, ozone-climate coupling, and a better assessment of impacts. There is a clear and present need to treat ozone across the range of scales, a transboundary issue, but with an emphasis on the hemispheric scales. New observational opportunities are offered both by satellites and small sensors that bridge the scales.

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Section: Arcticmentioning

confidence: 96%

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

et al. 2015

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“…The increasingly negative enhancement ratios for O 3 in Ta-535 ble 1 indicate that it undergoes a destruction process within the plume in the first few days, the net decrease in concentration is most likely dominated by oxidation reactions with numerous short-lived primary pyrogenic species within the young plumes. It was also noted by Alvarado et al (2010) 540 that there was very little clear evidence for O 3 formation in the young boreal plumes measured during ARCTAS-B in either aircraft or satellite observations and suggested that this was due to 40% of the NO x from the fires being converted to PAN within a few hours of emission thus limiting the imme-545 diate reactivity of the plume. An in-depth review of the production of O 3 in wildfires was recently published by Jaffe and Wigder (2012).…”

Section: O 3 Production In Boreal Biomass Burningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…NO 2 is also an important precursor to PAN which forms within a few hours. At low temperatures in the free troposphere, and in the presence of co-emitted NH 3 , HNO 3 will quickly convert to ammonium nitrate (NH 4 NO 3 ) (Yokelson et al, 2009;Alvarado et al, 2010). At night, NO 2 + O 3 can make NO 3 and NO 2 + NO 3 can make N 2 O 5 , which can hydrolyse to make HNO 3 .…”

Section: Enhancement Ratiosmentioning

confidence: 99%

ACE-FTS observations of pyrogenic trace species in boreal biomass burning plumes during BORTAS

et al. 2013

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To further our understanding of the effects of biomass burning emissions on atmospheric composition, the BORTAS campaign (BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites) was conducted on 12 July to 3 August 2011 during the boreal forest fire season in Canada. The simultaneous aerial, ground and satellite measurement campaign sought to record instances of boreal biomass burning to measure the tropospheric volume mixing ratios (VMRs) of short- and long-lived trace molecular species from biomass burning emissions. The goal was to investigate the connection between the composition and the distribution of these pyrogenic outflows and their resulting perturbation to atmospheric chemistry, with particular focus on oxidant species to determine the overall impact on the oxidizing capacity of the free troposphere.

Measurements of pyrogenic trace species in boreal biomass burning plumes were made by the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment Fourier Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS) onboard the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) SCISAT-1 satellite during the BORTAS campaign. Even though biomass burning emissions are typically confined to the boundary layer, outflows are often injected into the upper troposphere by isolated convection and fire-related convective processes, thus allowing space-borne instruments to measure these pyrogenic outflows. An extensive set of 14 molecules – CH₃OH, C₂H₂, C₂H₆, C₃H₆O, CO, HCN, HCOOH, HNO₃, H₂CO, NO, NO₂, OCS, O₃, and PAN – have been analysed. Included in this analysis is the calculation of age-dependent sets of enhancement ratios for each of the species originating from fires in North America (Canada, Alaska) and Siberia for a period of up to 7 days. Ratio values for the shorter lived primary pyrogenic species decrease over time primarily due to oxidation by the OH radical as the plume ages and values for longer lived species such as HCN and C₂H₆ remain relatively unchanged. Increasing negative values are observed for the oxidant species, including O₃, indicating a destruction process in the plume as it ages such that concentrations of the oxidant species have dropped below their off-plume values.

Results from previous campaigns have indicated that values for the molar ratios of ΔO₃ /ΔO obtained from the measurements of the pyrogenic outflow from boreal fires are highly variable and range from negative to positive, irrespective of plume age. This variability has been attributed to pollution effects where the pyrogenic outflows have mixed with either local urban NO_x emissions or pyrogenic emissions from the long-range transport of older plumes, thus affecting the production of O₃ within the plumes. The results from this study have identified another potential cause of the variability in O₃ concentrations observed in the measurements of bi...

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“…There was an early and unusually strong fire source in this region in spring 2008 due to early snow melt, and the smoke was a source of both carbonaceous aerosols and O 3 precursors to the Arctic (Jacob et al, 2010;Warneke et al, 2009). PAN can form rapidly in boreal smoke plumes, with approximately 40 % of the initial NO x emissions converted to PAN within a few hours of emission (Alvarado et al, 2010). Plumes from the Lake Baikal area, containing PAN mixing ratios up to ∼500 pptv, were also observed at MBO during spring 2008 (Fischer et al, 2010b, see Fig.…”

Section: Variations In a Pan Source: Biomass Burning Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Free tropospheric peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) and ozone at Mount Bachelor: potential causes of variability and timescale for trend detection

2011

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Abstract. We report on the first multi-year springtime measurements of PAN in the free troposphere over the US Pacific Northwest. The measurements were made at the summit of Mount Bachelor (43.979 • N, 121.687 • W; 2.7 km a.s.l.) by gas chromatography with electron capture detector during spring 2008, 2009 and 2010. This dataset provides an observational estimate of the month-to-month and springtime interannual variability of PAN mixing ratios in this region. Springtime seasonal mean (1 April-20 May) PAN mixing ratios at Mount Bachelor varied from 100 pptv to 152 pptv. The standard deviation of the three seasonal means was 28 pptv, 21 % of the springtime mean. We summarize the interannual variability in three factors expected to drive PAN variability: biomass burning, transport efficiency over the central and eastern Pacific, and transport temperature. Zhang et al. (2008) used the GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model to show that rising Asian NO x emissions from 2000 to 2006 resulted in a relatively larger positive trend in PAN than O 3 over western North America. However the model results only considered monotonic changes in Asian emissions, whereas other factors, such as biomass burning, isoprene emissions or climate change can induce greater variability in the atmospheric concentrations and thus extend the time needed for trend detection. We combined the observed variability in PAN and O 3 at Mount Bachelor with a range of possible future trends in these species to determine the observational requirements to detect such trends. Though the relative increase in PAN is expected to be larger than that of O 3 , PAN is more variable. If PAN mixing ratios are currently increasing at a rate of 4 % per year due to rising Asian Correspondence to: E. V. Fischer (efischer@atmos.washington.edu) emissions, we would detect a trend with 13 years of measurements at a site like Mount Bachelor. If the corresponding trend in O 3 is 1 % per year, the trends in O 3 and PAN would be detected on approximately the same timescale.

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Nitrogen oxides and PAN in plumes from boreal fires during ARCTAS-B and their impact on ozone: an integrated analysis of aircraft and satellite observations

Cited by 243 publications

References 54 publications

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

Tropospheric ozone and its precursors from the urban to the global scale from air quality to short-lived climate forcer

ACE-FTS observations of pyrogenic trace species in boreal biomass burning plumes during BORTAS

Free tropospheric peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) and ozone at Mount Bachelor: potential causes of variability and timescale for trend detection

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