Ming Luo

Nadir measurements of carbon monoxide distributions by the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer instrument onboard the Aura Spacecraft: Overview of analysis approach and examples of initial results

[1]xa0We provide an overview of the nadir measurements of carbon monoxide (CO) obtained thus far by the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES). The instrument is a high resolution array Fourier transform spectrometer designed to measure infrared spectral radiances from low Earth orbit. It is one of four instruments successfully launched onboard the Aura platform into a sun synchronous orbit at an altitude of 705 km on July 15, 2004 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Nadir spectra are recorded at 0.06-cm−1 spectral resolution with a nadir footprint of 5 × 8 km. We describe the TES retrieval approach for the analysis of the nadir measurements, report averaging kernels for typical tropical and polar ocean locations, characterize random and systematic errors for those locations, and describe instrument performance changes in the CO spectral region as a function of time. Sample maps of retrieved CO for the middle and upper troposphere from global surveys during December 2005 and April 2006 highlight the potential of the results for measurement and tracking of global pollution and determining air quality from space.

Indonesian fire activity and smoke pollution in 2015 show persistent nonlinear sensitivity to El Niño-induced drought

Significance The 2015 Indonesian fire season, in terms of fire activity and pollution, was the most severe since the NASA Earth Observing satellite system began observations in the early 2000s. Our estimates show that the 2015 CO2-equivalent biomass burning emissions for all of Indonesia were between the 2013 annual fossil fuel CO2 emissions of Japan and India. Longer-term records of airport visibility in Sumatra and Kalimantan show that 2015 ranked among the worst episodes on record. Analysis of dry season rainfall shows that, due to the continued use of fire to clear and prepare land on degraded peat, the Indonesian fire environment continues to have nonlinear sensitivity to dry conditions, and this sensitivity appears to have increased over Kalimantan. The 2015 fire season and related smoke pollution in Indonesia was more severe than the major 2006 episode, making it the most severe season observed by the NASA Earth Observing System satellites that go back to the early 2000s, namely active fire detections from the Terra and Aqua Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS), MODIS aerosol optical depth, Terra Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) carbon monoxide (CO), Aqua Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) CO, Aura Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) aerosol index, and Aura Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) CO. The MLS CO in the upper troposphere showed a plume of pollution stretching from East Africa to the western Pacific Ocean that persisted for 2 mo. Longer-term records of airport visibility in Sumatra and Kalimantan show that 2015 ranked after 1997 and alongside 1991 and 1994 as among the worst episodes on record. Analysis of yearly dry season rainfall from the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) and rain gauges shows that, due to the continued use of fire to clear and prepare land on degraded peat, the Indonesian fire environment continues to have nonlinear sensitivity to dry conditions during prolonged periods with less than 4 mm/d of precipitation, and this sensitivity appears to have increased over Kalimantan. Without significant reforms in land use and the adoption of early warning triggers tied to precipitation forecasts, these intense fire episodes will reoccur during future droughts, usually associated with El Niño events.

Changes in nitrogen oxides emissions in California during 2005–2010 indicated from top‐down and bottom‐up emission estimates

In California, emission control strategies have been implemented to reduce air pollutants. Here we estimate the changes in nitrogen oxides (NOxu2009=u2009NOu2009+u2009NO2) emissions in 2005–2010 using a state-of-the-art four-dimensional variational approach. We separately and jointly assimilate surface NO2 concentrations and tropospheric NO2 columns observed by Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) into the regional-scale Sulfur Transport and dEposition Model (STEM) chemical transport model on a 12u2009×u200912u2009km2 horizontal resolution grid in May 2010. The assimilation generates grid-scale top-down emission estimates, and the updated chemistry fields are evaluated with independent aircraft measurements during the NOAA California Nexus (CalNex) field experiment. The emission estimates constrained only by NO2 columns, only by surface NO2, and by both indicate statewide reductions of 26%, 29%, and 30% from ~0.3 Tg N/yr in the base year of 2005, respectively. The spatial distributions of the emission changes differ in these cases, which can be attributed to many factors including the differences in the observation sampling strategies and their uncertainties, as well as those in the sensitivities of column and surface NO2 with respect to NOx emissions. The updates in Californias NOx emissions reduced the mean error in modeled surface ozone in the Western U.S., even though the uncertainties in some urban areas increased due to their NOx-saturated chemical regime. The statewide reductions in NOx emissions indicated from our observationally constrained emission estimates are also reflected in several independently developed inventories: ~30% in the California Air Resources Board bottom-up inventory, ~4% in the 2008 National Emission Inventory, and ~20% in the annual mean top-down estimates by Lamsal et al. using the global Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS)-Chem model and OMI NO2 columns. Despite the grid-scale differences among all top-down and bottom-up inventories, they all indicate stronger emission reductions in the urban regions. This study shows the potential of using space-/ground-based monitoring data and advanced data assimilation approach to timely and independently update NOx emission estimates on a monthly scale and at a fine grid resolution. The well-evaluated results here suggest that these approaches can be applied more broadly.

Sources and Impacts of Atmospheric NH3: Current Understanding and Frontiers for Modeling, Measurements, and Remote Sensing in North America

Ammonia (NH3) contributes to widespread adverse health impacts, affects the climate forcing of ambient aerosols, and is a significant component of reactive nitrogen, deposition of which threatens many sensitive ecosystems. Historically, the scarcity of in situ measurements and the complexity of gas-to-aerosol NH3 partitioning have contributed to large uncertainties in our knowledge of its sources and distributions. However, recent progress in measurements and modeling has afforded new opportunities for improving our understanding of NH3 and the role it plays in these important environmental issues. In the past few years, passive measurements of NH3 have been added to monitoring networks throughout the USA, now in place at more than 60 stations, while mobile measurements aboard aircrafts and vehicles have provide detailed observations during several recent field campaigns. In addition, new remote sensing observations from multiple satellite instruments have begun to provide vast amounts of NH3 observations throughout the globe. These sources of information have collectively driven new air quality modeling capabilities, by revealing deficiencies in current air quality models and spurring development of mechanistic enhancements to models’ physical representation of the diurnal variability and bidirectional nature of NH3 fluxes. In turn, these advanced models require further observational constraints, as existing NH3 measurements are still limited in spatiotemporal coverage. We thus evaluate the potential value of a new geostationary remote sensing instrument (GCIRI) for providing constraints on NH3 fluxes through multiple Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs).

Retrievals of Tropospheric Ozone Profiles from the SynergicObservation of AIRS and OMI: Methodology and Validation

The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) on the A-Train Aura satellite was designed to profile tropospheric ozone and its precursors, taking measurements from 2004 to 2018. Starting in 2008, TES global sampling of tropospheric 15 ozone was gradually reduced in latitude with global coverage stopping in 2011. To extend the record of TES, this work presents a multispectral approach that will provide O3 data products with vertical resolution and measurement uncertainty similar to TES by combining the single-footprint thermal infrared (TIR) hyperspectral radiances from the Aqua Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument and the ultraviolet (UV) channels from the Aura Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). The joint AIR+OMI O3 retrievals are processed through the MUlti-SpEctra, MUlti-SpEcies, MUlti-SEnsors (MUSES) retrieval 20 algorithm. Comparisons of collocated joint AIRS+OMI and TES to ozonesonde measurements show that both systems have similar errors, with mean and standard deviation of the differences well within the estimated measurement uncertainty. AIRS+OMI and TES have slightly different biases (within 5 parts per billion) versus the sondes. Both AIRS and OMI have wide swath widths (~1,650 km for AIRS; ~2,600 km for OMI) across satellite ground tracks. Consequently, the joint AIRS+OMI measurements have the potential to maintain TES vertical sensitivity while increasing coverage by two orders of 25 magnitude, thus providing an unprecedented new dataset to quantify the evolution of tropospheric ozone. Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-2018-138 Manuscript under review for journal Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discussion started: 16 May 2018 c

Sensitivity of simulated tropospheric CO to subgrid physics parameterization: A case study of Indonesian biomass burning emissions in 2006: CO Sensitivity to Subgrid Physics

Recent cumulus and turbulence parameterization changes to the NASA GISS ModelE2 have improved representation of the Madden-Julian Oscillation and low cloud distribution, but their effect on composition-related quantities is not known. In this study, we simulate the vertical transport of carbon monoxide (CO) from uncontrolled biomass burning in Indonesia in late 2006, during which uniquely high CO was detected in the upper troposphere. Two configurations of ModelE2, one without the changes (AR5) and one with the changes (AR5’), are used for an ensemble simulation of the transport of CO from the biomass burning. The simulation results are evaluated against new CO profiles retrieved jointly from the Aura Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer and the Microwave Limb Sounder. n nModeled upper tropospheric CO using the AR5 physics was unrealistically high. The AR5’ physics suppress deep convection that reaches near the tropopause, reducing vertical transport of CO to the upper troposphere, and bringing the model into better agreement with satellite CO. In this regard, the most important changes were related to the strength of entrainment of environmental air into the convective column, the strength of re-evaporation above cloud base, and a negative plume buoyancy threshold based on density temperature. This study illustrates how individual, non-composition model changes can lead to significantly different modeled composition, which in this case improved agreement with satellite retrievals. This study also illuminates the potential usefulness of CO satellite observations in constraining unobservable processes in GCMs.