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Tropospheric vertical distribution of tropical Atlantic ozone observed by TES during the northern African biomass burning season
Author(s) -
Jourdain L.,
Worden H. M.,
Worden J. R.,
Bowman K.,
Li Q.,
Eldering A.,
Kulawik S. S.,
Osterman G.,
Boersma K. F.,
Fisher B.,
Rinsland C. P.,
Beer R.,
Gunson M.
Publication year - 2007
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 - 10.1029/2006gl028284
Subject(s) - troposphere , intertropical convergence zone , tropical atlantic , climatology , atmospheric sciences , environmental science , tropospheric ozone , ozone , atlantic hurricane , oceanography , geology , tropical cyclone , sea surface temperature , geography , meteorology , precipitation
We present vertical distributions of ozone from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) over the tropical Atlantic Ocean during January 2005. Between 10N and 20S, TES ozone retrievals have Degrees of Freedom for signal (DOF) around 0.7–0.8 each for tropospheric altitudes above and below 500 hPa. As a result, TES is able to capture for the first time from space a distribution characterized by two maxima: one in the lower troposphere north of the ITCZ and one in the middle and upper troposphere south of the ITCZ. We focus our analysis on the north tropical Atlantic Ocean, where most of previous satellite observations showed discrepancies with in‐situ ozone observations and models. Trajectory analyses and a sensitivity study using the GEOS‐Chem model confirm the influence of northern Africa biomass burning on the elevated ozone mixing ratios observed by TES over this region.