ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-3-387-2003 Intercontinental transport of nitrogen oxide pollution plumes Wenig M. 1 2 5 Spichtinger N. 3 Stohl A. 3 Held G. 4 Beirle S. 1 Wagner T. 1 Jähne B. 1 2 Platt U. 1 Institut für Umweltphysik (IUP), Heidelberg University, Germany Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Wissenschaftliches Rechnen, Heidelberg, Germany Lehrstuhl für Bioklimatologie und Immissionsforschung, TUM, Freising, Germany Instituto Pesquisas Meteorológicas, Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil now at: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt MD, USA 03 04 2003 3 2 387 393 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/3/387/2003/acp-3-387-2003.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/3/387/2003/acp-3-387-2003.pdf

We describe the first satellite observation of intercontinental transport of nitrogen oxides emitted by power plants, verified by simulations with a particle tracer model. The analysis of such episodes shows that anthropogenic NO<sub>x</sub> plumes may influence the atmospheric chemistry thousands of kilometers away from its origin, as well as the ocean they traverse due to nitrogen fertilization. This kind of monitoring became possible by applying an improved algorithm to extract the tropospheric fraction of NO<sub>2</sub> from the spectral data coming from the GOME instrument.<br> <br> As an example we show the observation of NO<sub>2</sub> in the time period 4--14 May, 1998, from the South African Plateau to Australia which was possible due to favourable weather conditions during that time period which availed the satellite measurement. This episode was also simulated with the Lagrangian particle dispersion model FLEXPART which uses NO<sub>x</sub> emissions taken from an inventory for industrial emissions in South Africa and is driven with analyses from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Additionally lightning emissions were taken into account by utilizing Lightning Imaging Sensor data. Lightning was found to contribute probably not more than 25% of the resulting concentrations. Both, the measured and simulated emission plume show matching patterns while traversing the Indian Ocean to Australia and show great resemblance to the aerosol and CO<sub>2</sub> transport observed by Piketh et al. (2000).