Tropospheric sources of NO2 seen (and unseen) by OMI
Abstract
The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), aboard the EOS-AURA satellite provides measurements with high spectral (~0.5 nm) and spatial (~26 km, at nadir) resolutions. The spatial resolution is on the order of the typical size of urban centers. The NO2 retrieval algorithm is the result of a joint effort between NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and Space Sciences Finland (SSF). The algorithm detects tropospheric NO2 enhancements, and corrects them using an air mass factor (AMF) appropriate to that situation. Significant NO2 enhancements are largely antropogenic; natural sources, such as lightning, generally produce much lower concentrations. Databases of NO2 source inventories have been available, and are the basis of chemical transport modeling of NO2 concentrations. In this presentation, we examine daily global NO2 vertical column density fields retrieved from OMI over its first year of operations, and identify both persistent and episodic elevated NO2 events, and compare them to the inventory databases. Preliminary examination of small sets of data suggested that, while most of the expected source regions are seen in the data, plumes from expected sources are either not seen, or seen at much lower levels than expected, while some prominent persistent sources are seen in the data, which are not in the source databases. Episodic events should be associated with known events, such as biomass burning.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2005
- Bibcode:
- 2005AGUFM.A41A0020C
- Keywords:
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- 0300 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0345 Pollution: urban and regional (0305;
- 0478;
- 4251);
- 0365 Troposphere: composition and chemistry;
- 0368 Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry