References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-7-4751-2007

Spatially resolved measurements of nitrogen dioxide in an urban environment using concurrent multi-axis differential optical absorption spectroscopy

Leigh

R. J.

¹ Corlett

G. K.

¹ Frieß

¹ ² Monks

P. S.

University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

now at: University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

18 09 2007

7 18 4751 4762

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.

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The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/4751/2007/acp-7-4751-2007.pdf

A novel system using the technique of concurrent multi-axis differential optical absorption spectroscopy system has been developed and applied to the measurement of nitrogen dioxide in an urban environment. Using five fixed telescopes, slant columns of nitrogen dioxide, ozone, water vapour, and the oxygen dimer, O4, are simultaneously retrieved in five vertically separated viewing directions. The application of this remote sensing technique in the urban environment is explored. Through the application of several simplifying assumptions a tropospheric concentration of NO2 is derived and compared with an urban background in-situ chemiluminescence detector. Trends derived from remote sensing and in-situ techniques show agreement to within 15 to 40% depending on conditions. Owing to the high time resolution of the measurements, the ability to image and quantify plumes within the urban environment is demonstrated. The CMAX-DOAS measurements provide a useful measure of overall NO2 concentrations on a city-wide scale.

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