Identification

Title

Nitrogen oxides emissions, chemistry, deposition, and export over the Northeast United States during the WINTER aircraft campaign

Abstract

We examine the distribution and fate of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the lower troposphere over the Northeast United States (NE US) using aircraft observations from the Wintertime INvestigation of Transport, Emissions, and Reactivity (WINTER) campaign in February-March 2015, as well as the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model and concurrent ground-based observations. We find that the National Emission Inventory from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is consistent with WINTER observations of total reactive nitrogen (TNOy) to within 10% on average, in contrast to the significant overestimate reported in past studies under warmer conditions. Updates to the dry deposition scheme and dinitrogen pentoxide (N2O5) reactive uptake probability, ɣ(N2O5), result in an improved simulation of gas-phase nitric acid (HNO3) and submicron particulate nitrate (pNO3-), reducing the longstanding factor of 2-3 overestimate in wintertime HNO3 + pNO3- to a 50% positive bias. We find a NOx lifetime against chemical loss and deposition of 22 hr in the lower troposphere over the NE US. Chemical loss of NOx is dominated by N2O5 hydrolysis (58% of loss) and reaction with OH (33%), while 7% of NOx leads to the production of organic nitrates. Wet and dry deposition account for 55% and 45% of TNOy deposition over land, respectively. We estimate that 42% of the NOx emitted is exported from the NE US boundary layer during winter, mostly in the form of HNO3 + pNO3- (40%) and NOx (38%).

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7pr7zx8

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

2018-11-16T00:00:00Z

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