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Data associated with the manuscript Using TES retrievals to investigate PAN in North American biomass burning plumes

Date

2017

Authors

Fischer, Emily V.
Zhu, Liye
Payne, Vivienne H
Brey, Steven

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Abstract

Peroxyacyl nitrate (PAN) is a critical atmospheric reservoir for nitrogen oxide radicals, and it plays a lead role in their redistribution in the troposphere. We analyze new Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) PAN observations over North America during July 2006 to 2009. Using aircraft observations from the Colorado Front Range, we demonstrate that TES can be sensitive to elevated PAN in the boundary layer (~750 hPa) even in the presence of clouds. In situ observations have shown that wildfire emissions can rapidly produce PAN, and PAN decomposition is an important component of ozone production in smoke plumes. We identify smoke-impacted TES PAN retrievals by co-location with NOAA Hazard Mapping System (HMS) smoke plumes. Depending on the year, 15 – 32 % of cases where elevated PAN is identified in TES observations (retrievals with DOF > 0.6) overlap smoke plumes during July. Of all the retrievals attempted in July 2006 to July 2009, the percent associated with smoke is 18%. A case study of smoke transport in July 2007 illustrates that PAN enhancements associated with HMS smoke plumes can be connected to fire complexes, providing evidence that TES is sufficiently sensitive to measure elevated PAN several days downwind of major fires. Using a subset of retrievals with TES 510 hPa carbon monoxide (CO) > 150 ppbv, and multiple estimates of background PAN, we calculate enhancement ratios for tropospheric average PAN relative to CO in smoke-impacted retrievals. Most of the TES-based enhancement ratios fall within the range calculated from in situ measurements.

Description

The attached dataset contains the latitude, longitude, time, HMS smoke overlap status, and tropospheric average and maximum TES PAN and TES CO used in Fischer et al. [2018]. See abstract and publication related to this dataset.
Department of Atmospheric Science

Rights Access

Subject

TES
PAN
fires

Citation

Associated Publications

Fischer, E. V., Zhu, L., Payne, V. H., Worden, J. R., Jiang, Z., Kulawik, S. S., Brey, S., Hecobian, A., Gombos, D., Cady-Pereira, K., and Flocke, F.: Using TES retrievals to investigate PAN in North American biomass burning plumes, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 18, 5639–5653, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-5639-2018, 2018.