Comparison of chemical characteristics of 495 biomass burning plumes intercepted by the NASA DC-8 aircraft during the ARCTAS/CARB-2008 field campaign

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2011-12-22

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Hecobian, A., Liu, Z., Hennigan, C. J., Huey, L. G., Jimenez, J. L., Cubison, M. J., Vay, S., Diskin, G. S., Sachse, G. W., Wisthaler, A., Mikoviny, T., Weinheimer, A. J., Liao, J., Knapp, D. J., Wennberg, P. O., Kürten, A., Crounse, J. D., Clair, J. St., Wang, Y., and Weber, R. J.: Comparison of chemical characteristics of 495 biomass burning plumes intercepted by the NASA DC-8 aircraft during the ARCTAS/CARB-2008 field campaign, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 13325–13337, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-11-13325-2011, 2011.

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Public Domain Mark 1.0
This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.

Subjects

Abstract

his paper compares measurements of gaseous and particulate emissions from a wide range of biomass-burning plumes intercepted by the NASA DC-8 research aircraft during the three phases of the ARCTAS-2008 experiment: ARCTAS-A, based out of Fairbanks, Alaska, USA (3 April to 19 April 2008); ARCTAS-B based out of Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada (29 June to 13 July 2008); and ARCTAS-CARB, based out of Palmdale, California, USA (18 June to 24 June 2008). Approximately 500 smoke plumes from biomass burning emissions that varied in age from minutes to days were segregated by fire source region and urban emission influences. The normalized excess mixing ratios (NEMR) of gaseous (carbon dioxide, acetonitrile, hydrogen cyanide, toluene, benzene, methane, oxides of nitrogen and ozone) and fine aerosol particulate components (nitrate, sulfate, ammonium, chloride, organic aerosols and water soluble organic carbon) of these plumes were compared. A detailed statistical analysis of the different plume categories for different gaseous and aerosol species is presented in this paper.