Identification

Title

PAN in the eastern Pacific free troposphere: A satellite view of the sources, seasonality, interannual variability, and timeline for trend detection

Abstract

Peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) is an important trace gas that serves to transport nitrogen oxide radicals throughout the troposphere. We present an analysis of satellite observations of PAN from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) over the eastern Pacific Ocean for April and July 2006-2010 and the spring-to-summer seasonal transition for 2006. TES can provide quantitative estimates of free tropospheric PAN in clear-sky or thin cloud conditions where elevated PAN (>0.2ppbv) is present. The percentage of successful PAN detections increases from April to July and then decreases in August and September. However, there are no significant differences in the tropospheric average PAN either interannually or between these months. Plumes containing elevated PAN are present almost every day in July. Elevated PAN observed in July has multiple sources, including fires in Siberia, anthropogenic sources in eastern China, and recirculated pollution from the continental U.S. We combined the observed variability in the TES PAN retrievals over the eastern Pacific Ocean with a range of possible trends in PAN to determine the observational requirements to detect such trends. Based on the variability observed in the PAN retrievals over this region, we predict that it would be faster to detect a trend of a given magnitude in PAN using satellite observations over the eastern Pacific Ocean region rather than in situ surface observations and that a trend of a given magnitude would be more quickly detected in summer than spring.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7vd71bk

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2017-03-27T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact