A14B-05
Using New Observations from TES to Evaluate the Contribution of Fires to Peroxyacetyl Nitrate (PAN) over North America and Asia
Monday, 14 December 2015: 17:00
3004 (Moscone West)
Emily V Fischer, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, United States, Vivienne Payne, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, Liye Zhu, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, John R Worden, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States and Zhe Jiang, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States
Abstract:
Neither the mechanisms or the magnitude of the contribution of fires to ozone are completely understood, but peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) chemistry is certainly part of the puzzle. In situ observations show that PAN is formed rapidly in fire plumes, and its eventual decomposition can provide an important NOx redistribution pathway capable of sustaining efficient ozone production under the right conditions. Satellite measurements of PAN from the Aura Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) offer a new opportunity to look at when and where elevated PAN abundances in the troposphere are due to fires, placing new constraints on our understanding of the air quality impacts of smoke plumes. We will present an overview of what we have learned about fires and PAN from TES, and what types of analyses have been required to pull information out of this emerging dataset. We will focus on TES retrievals of PAN over Asia and North America collected between 2005 and 2011 during spring and summer months. We have found that fires are a major source of the PAN observed by TES in both regions, but there is significant observed interannual variability driven by a combination of emissions and dynamics.
