Premium
Sources of reactive nitrogen in the upper troposphere during SONEX
Author(s) -
Liu S. C.,
Yu H.,
Ridley B.,
Wang Y.,
Davis D. D.,
Kondo Y.,
Koike M.,
Anderson B. E.,
Vay S. A.,
Sachse G. W.,
Gregory G. L.,
Fuelburg H.,
Thompson A.,
Singh H.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/1999gl900532
Subject(s) - troposphere , stratosphere , atmospheric sciences , environmental science , trace gas , meteorology , climatology , geology , physics
The relationship among NOy, O 3 , N 2 O, ultra‐fine condensation nuclei (CN), and other trace gases in the upper troposphere (UT) and lower stratosphere (LS) observed during SONEX are analyzed with the goal to identify and quantify the sources of NOy in the UT. We use N 2 O to separate upper tropospheric air from stratospheric influenced air and focus our analysis to the former. The distributions of NOy and O 3 show remarkable similarity when they are plotted as a function of N 2 O. The only difference between NOy and O 3 is found in upper tropospheric air where a large number of data points have high values of both NOy and the NOy/O 3 ratio. Major sources contributing to these high NOy values are found to be emissions from lightning and surface sources transported to the UT by convection.