Measurements of nitrogen oxides at the tropopause: Attribution to convection and correlation with lightning

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dc.contributor.authorJeker, Dominique P.
dc.contributor.authorPfister, Leonhard
dc.contributor.authorThompson, Anne M.
dc.contributor.authorBrunner, Dominik
dc.contributor.authorBoccippio, Dennis J.
dc.contributor.authorPickering, Kenneth E.
dc.contributor.authorWernli, Heini
dc.contributor.authorKondo, Yutaka
dc.contributor.authorStaehelin, Johannes
dc.date.accessioned2024-07-26T16:34:14Z
dc.date.available2024-07-26T16:34:14Z
dc.date.issued2000-02-01
dc.description.abstractNOₓ (NO and NO₂) and ozone were measured on 98 flights during August to November 1997 in the framework of the projects Pollution From Aircraft Emissions in the North Atlantic Flight Corridor (POLINAT 2) and Subsonic Assessment Ozone and Nitrogen Oxide Experiment (SONEX). The fully automated measurement system Nitrogen Oxides and Ozone Along Air Routes (NOXAR) was permanently installed aboard an inservice Swissair B-747 airliner operating in the North Atlantic Flight Corridor. Below the tropopause, predominantly over the U.S. east coast, the patchy occurrence of NOₓ enhancements up to 3000 parts per trillion by volume (pptv) was observed frequently and led to a lognormal probability density function of NOₓ. These plumes extend over several hundred kilometers. In three case studies the origin of such plumes was investigated using back trajectories, satellite infrared images, and lightning observations from the U.S. National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) and the Optical Transient Detector (OTD) satellite instrument. In the case of frontal activity above the continental United States, the location of NOₓ plumes was explained with maps of convective influence. In another case, NOₓ seems to have been produced by lightning in a marine thunderstorm over the eastern Atlantic. Lightning activity triggered over the warm Gulf Stream is found to be an important source for the regional upper tropospheric NOₓ budget, at least for the time period considered. With a method that we call “lightning tracing” we show for the first time that (in some cases) the number of lightning flashes, accumulated along back trajectories, was proportional to the NOₓ concentrations observed several hundred kilometers downwind of the anvil outflows. We suggest that mixing processes in convective clouds reduce the initially highly heterogeneous NOₓ field rapidly, but that following this phase, the structure of large-scale plumes remains stable over relatively long periods of time (as they decay).
dc.description.sponsorshipThe realization of this project would not have been possible without the help of the following parties, to whom we express our gratitude: Swissair for installing and transporting the NOXAR instrumentation package and to Swissair Flight Dispatch for communicating the flight tracks to the DLR and SONEX project offices for coordinated flights; Hans Schlager(DLR) and Jim Eilers (NASAAmes) for handling t hecommunicationwithSwissairandthusmakingtheintercomparisonflightspossible;HelmutZiereis(DLR) for the NO bottle exchange allowing us to establish a common gas standard; Steve J. Goodman(NASA MSFC), the Global Hydrology Resource Center and Global Atmospherics, Inc. for access to OTD data and the National Lightning Detection Network long-range data product; Marion Legg(NASA Ames)for preparing the large amount of brightnesstemperatureenhancedGOES-8images;LyattJaeg16,HarvardUniversity,for the calculation of the NOx residence time in the August marine convection case. ECOPHYSICS (DQrnten, Switzerland) provided us with support during the campaign, and the Swiss Federal Office for Education and Sciences funded our participation in the POLINAT project; USRA funded a trip of the first author to the GSFC.
dc.description.urihttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/1999JD901053
dc.format.extent22 pages
dc.genrejournal articles
dc.identifierdoi:10.13016/m2sx0f-g5ms
dc.identifier.citationJeker, Dominique P., Leonhard Pfister, Anne M. Thompson, Dominik Brunner, Dennis J. Boccippio, Kenneth E. Pickering, Heini Wernli, Yutaka Kondo, and Johannes Staehelin. “Measurements of Nitrogen Oxides at the Tropopause: Attribution to Convection and Correlation with Lightning.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 105, no. D3 (2000): 3679–3700. https://doi.org/10.1029/1999JD901053.
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.1029/1999JD901053
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11603/34943
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherAGU
dc.relation.isAvailableAtThe University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
dc.relation.ispartofUMBC GESTAR II
dc.rightsThis 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.
dc.rightsPublic Domain
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
dc.titleMeasurements of nitrogen oxides at the tropopause: Attribution to convection and correlation with lightning
dc.typeText
dcterms.creatorhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-7829-0920

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