ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-3-459-2003 Chemical characteristics assigned to trajectory clusters during the MINOS campaign Traub M. 1 Fischer H. 1 de Reus M. 1 Kormann R. 1 Heland H. 2 Ziereis H. 2 Schlager H. 2 Holzinger R. 1 Williams J. 1 Warneke C. 3 de Gouw J. 3 Lelieveld J. 1 Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany Institute for Atmospheric Physics, German Aerospace Center, DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, Boulder, Colorado, USA 17 04 2003 3 2 459 468 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/3/459/2003/acp-3-459-2003.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/3/459/2003/acp-3-459-2003.pdf

During the Mediterranean Intensive Oxidant Study (MINOS) in August 2001 a total of 14 measurement flights were performed with the DLR Falcon jet aircraft from Heraklion, Crete. One objective of this campaign was to investigate the role of long-range transport of pollutants into the Mediterranean area. An analysis of 5-day back trajectories indicates that in the lower troposphere (0-4 km) air masses originated from eastern and western Europe, in the mid-troposphere (4-8 km) from the North Atlantic Ocean region and in the upper troposphere (8-14 km) from North Atlantic Ocean/North America (NANA) as well as South Asia. We allocated all back trajectories to clusters based on their ending height and source region. The mixing ratios of ozone, nitrogen oxide, total reactive oxidized nitrogen (NO<sub>y</sub>), formaldehyde, methanol, acetonitrile, acetone, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane measured along the flight tracks are examined in relation to the different cluster trajectories. In the lower troposphere the mean trace gas mixing ratios of the eastern Europe cluster trajectories were significantly higher than those from western Europe. In the upper troposphere air from the NANA region seems to be influenced by the stratosphere, in addition, air masses were transported from South Asia, being influenced by strong convection in the Indian monsoon.