The influence of boreal biomass burning emissions on the distribution of tropospheric ozone over North America and the North Atlantic during 2010

• Published in: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
• Main Authors: Parrington, M., Palmer, P. I., Henze, D. K., Tarasick, D. W., Hyer, E. J., Owen, R. C., Helmig, D., Clerbaux, Cathy, Bowman, K. W., Deeter, M. N., Barratt, E. M., Coheur, Pierre-François, Hurtmans, Daniel, Jiang, Z., George, Maya, Worden, J. R.
• Other Authors: School of Geosciences Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Air Quality Research Division Toronto, Environment and Climate Change Canada, NRL's Marine Meteorology Division, Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Michigan (CEE), Michigan Technological University (MTU), Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), Spectroscopie de l'atmosphère, Service de Chimie Quantique et Photophysique, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), TROPO - LATMOS, Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)-Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6 (UPMC)-Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology (CALTECH)-NASA, National Center for Atmospheric Research Boulder (NCAR), Department of Physics Toronto, University of Toronto
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2012
• Subjects: geo; envir; Canada; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-12-2077-2012; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00621767/file/acp-12-2077-2012.pdf; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00621767

We have analysed the sensitivity of the tropospheric ozone distribution over North America and the North Atlantic to boreal biomass burning emissions during the summer of 2010 using the GEOS-Chem 3-D global tropospheric chemical transport model and observations from in situ and satellite instruments. We show that the model ozone distribution is consistent with observations from the Pico Mountain Observatory in the Azores, ozonesondes across Canada, and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) and Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Instrument (IASI) satellite instruments. Mean biases between the model and observed ozone mixing ratio in the free troposphere were less than 10 ppbv. We used the adjoint of GEOS-Chem to show the model ozone distribution in the free troposphere over Maritime Canada is largely sensitive to NOx emissions from biomass burning sources in Central Canada, lightning sources in the central US, and anthropogenic sources in the eastern US and south-eastern Canada. We also used the adjoint of GEOS-Chem to evaluate the Fire Locating And Monitoring of Burning Emissions (FLAMBE) inventory through assimilation of CO observations from the Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT) satellite instrument. The CO inversion showed that, on average, the FLAMBE emissions needed to be reduced to 89% of their original values, with scaling factors ranging from 12% to 102%, to fit the MOPITT observations in the boreal regions. Applying the CO scaling factors to all species emitted from boreal biomass burning sources led to a decrease of the model tropospheric distributions of CO, PAN, and NOx by as much as −20 ppbv, −50 pptv, and −20 pptv respectively. The modification of the biomass burning emission estimates reduced the model ozone distribution by approximately −3 ppbv (−8%) and on average improved the agreement of the model ozone distribution compared to the observations throughout the free troposphere, reducing the mean model bias from 5.5 to 4.0 ppbv for the Pico Mountain Observatory, 3.0 to 0.9 ...