A41A-0013
Direct Measurement of Atmospheric Ammonia from an Airborne Miniature Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (miniCIMS)
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Kathleen Casados, Carleton College, Northfield, MN, United States, Steven Schill, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States, Sean Freeman, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States, Matthew Zoerb, California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, San Luis Obispo, CA, United States, Timothy H Bertram, University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI, United States and Barry L Lefer, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, United States
Abstract:
Ammonia is emitted into the atmosphere from a variety of sources such as trees, ocean, diary fields, biomass burning, and fuel emissions. Previous studies have investigated the environmental impacts of atmospheric ammonia which can include chemical reactivity, nucleation of fine particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5 ), and implications for human health, but its chemical nature and relatively short lifetime make direct measurement of atmospheric ammonia difficult. During the 2015 NASA Student Airborne Research Program (SARP) an airborne miniature Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometer (miniCIMS) was deployed on the NASA DC-8 flying laboratory in the Southern California region. The spatial and temporal variability of measured atmospheric ammonia concentrations will be discussed.
