References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-6-2401-2006

In-situ comparison of the NOy instruments flown in MOZAIC and SPURT

Pätz

H.-W.

¹ Volz-Thomas

¹ Hegglin

M. I.

² Brunner

² Fischer

³ Schmidt

⁴

Institut für Chemie und Dynamik der Geosphäre II: Troposphäre, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany

Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH-Zürich, Switzerland

Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany

Institut für Atmosphäre und Umwelt, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, Germany

29 06 2006

6 9 2401 2410

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/6/2401/2006/acp-6-2401-2006.html

The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/6/2401/2006/acp-6-2401-2006.pdf

Two aircraft instruments for the measurement of total odd nitrogen (NOy) were compared side by side aboard a Learjet A35 in April 2003 during a campaign of the AFO2000 project SPURT (Spurengastransport in der Tropopausenregion). The instruments albeit employing the same measurement principle (gold converter and chemiluminescence) had different inlet configurations. The ECO-Physics instrument operated by ETH-Zürich in SPURT had the gold converter mounted outside the aircraft, whereas the instrument operated by FZ-Jülich in the European project MOZAIC III (Measurements of ozone, water vapour, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides aboard Airbus A340 in-service aircraft) employed a Rosemount probe with 80 cm of FEP-tubing connecting the inlet to the gold converter. The NOy concentrations during the flight ranged between 0.3 and 3 ppb. The two data sets were compared in a blind fashion and each team followed its normal operating procedures. On average, the measurements agreed within 7%, i.e. within the combined uncertainty of the two instruments. This puts an upper limit on potential losses of HNO3 in the Rosemount inlet of the MOZAIC instrument. Larger transient deviations were observed during periods after calibrations and when the aircraft entered the stratosphere. The time lag of the MOZAIC instrument observed in these instances is in accordance with the time constant of the MOZAIC inlet line determined in the laboratory for HNO3.

References 1

Bollinger, M. J., Sievers, R. E., Fahey, D. W., and Fehsenfeld, F. C.: Conversion of Nitrogen Dioxide, Nitric Acid, and n-Propyl Nitrate to Nitric Oxide by Gold-Catalyzed Reduction with Carbon Monoxide, Analytical Chemistry, 55, 1980–1986, 1983.

Brough, N., Reeves, C. E., Penkett, S. A., Dewey, K., Kent, J., Barjat, H., Monks, P. S., Ziereis, H., Stock, P., Huntrieser, H., and Schlager, H.: Intercomparison of aircraft instruments on board the C-130 and Falcon 20 over southern Germany during EXPORT 2000, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 3, 2127–2138, 2003.

Crosley, D. R.: NOy Blue Ribbon Panel, J. Geophys. Res., 101, 2049–2052, 1996.

Crutzen, P. J.: The Role of NO and NO$_2$ in the Chemistry of the Troposphere and Stratosphere, Ann. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci., 7, 443–472, 1979.

Engel, A., Bönisch, H., Brunner, D., Fischer, H., Franke, H., Günther, G., Gurk, C., Hegglin, M. I., Hoor, P., Königstedt, R., Krebsbach, M., Maser, R., Parchatka, U., Peter, T., Schell, D., Schiller, C., Schmidt, U., Spelten, N., Szabo, T., Weers, U., Wernli, H., Wetter, T., and Wirth, V.: Highly resolved observations of trace gases in the lowermost stratosphere and upper troposphere from the Spurt project: an overview, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 6, 283–301, 2006.

Fahey, D. W., Eubank, C. S., Hübler, G., and Fehsenfeld, F. C.: Evaluation of a Catalytic Reduction Technique for the Measurement of Total Reactive Odd-Nitrogen NOy in the Atmosphere, J. Atmos. Chem., 3, 435–468, 1985.

Hegglin, M. I.: Airborne NOy-, NO- and O$_3$-measurements during SPURT: Implications for atmospheric transport, ETH Zurich, Ph.D.-Thesis, 2004.

Hegglin, M. I., Brunner, D., Wernli, H., Schwierz, C., Martius, O., Hoor, P., Fischer, H., Parchatka, U., Spelten, N., Schiller, C., Krebsbach, M., Weers, U., Staehelin, J., and Peter, T.: Tracing troposphere-to-stratosphere transport above a mid-latitude deep convective system, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 4, 741–756, 2004.

Hegglin, M. I., Brunner, D., Peter, Th., Fischer, H., Staehelin, J., Krebsbach, M., Schiller, C., Parchatka, U., and Weers, U.: Measurements of NO, NO$_\rm y$, N$_2$O, and O$_3$ during SPURT: Implications for transport and chemistry in the lowermost stratosphere, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 6, 1331–1350, 2006.

Keim, E. R., Loewenstein, M., Podolske, J. R., Fahey, D. W., Gao, R. S., Woodbridge, E. L., Wamsley, R. C., Donnelly, S. G., Delnegro, L. A., Nevison, C. D., Solomon, S., Rosenlof, K. H., Scott, C. J., Ko, M. K. W., Weisenstein, D., and Chan, K. R.: Measurements of the NOy – N$_2$O correlation in the lower stratosphere: Latitudinal and seasonal changes and model comparisons, J. Geophys. Res., 102, 13 193–13 212, 1997.

Lange, L., Fischer, H., Parchatka, U., Gurk, C., and Zenker, T.: Characterization and application of an externally mounted catalytic converter for aircraft measurements of NOy, Rev. Sci. Instr., 73, 3051–3057, 2002.

Murphy, D. M. and Fahey, D. W.: Mathematical Treatment of the Wall Loss of a Trace Species in Denuder and Catalytic Converter Tubes, Analytical Chemistry, 59(23), 2753–2759, 1987.

Murphy, D. M., Fahey, D. H., Proffitt, M. H., Liu, S. C., Chan, K. R., Eubank, C. S., Kawa, S. R., and Kelly, K. K.: Reactive Nitrogen and its Correlation With Ozone in the Lower Stratosphere and Upper Troposhere, J. Geophys. Res., 98, 8751–8773, 1993.

Neuman, J. A., Gao, R. S., Fahey, D. W., Holecek, J. C., Ridley, B. A., Walega, J. G., Grahek, F. E., Richard, E. C., McElroy, C. T., Thompson, T. L., Elkins, J. W., Moore, F. L., and Ray, E. A.: In situ measurements of HNO$_3$, NOy, NO, and O$_3$ in the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere, Atmos. Environ., 35, 5789–5797, 2001.

Ryerson, T. B., Huey, L. G., Knapp, K., Neuman, J. A., Parrish, D. D., Sueper, D. T., and Fehsenfeld, F. C.: Design and initial characterization of an inlet for gas-phase NOy measurements from aircraft, J. Geophys. Res., 104, 5483–5492, 1999.

Singh, H. B., Salas, L., Herlth, D., Kolyer, R., Czech, E., Viezee, W., Li, Q., Jacob, D. J., Blake, D., Sachse, G., Harward, C. N., Fuelberg, H., Kiley, C. M., Zhao, Y., and Kondo, Y.: In situ measurements of HCN and CH$_3$CN over the Pacific Ocean: Sources, sinks, and budgets, J. Geophys. Res., 108, 8795 (GTE 16-1–16-14), 2003.

Volz-Thomas, A., Berg, M., Heil, T., Houben, N., Lerner, A., Petrick, W., Raak, D., and Pätz, H.-W.: Measurements of total odd nitrogen (NOy) aboard MOZAIC in-service aircraft: instrument design, operation and performance, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 5, 583–595, 2005.