ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-9-6389-2009 Impact of tropospheric nitrogen dioxide on the regional radiation budget Vasilkov A. P. 1 Joiner J. 2 Oreopoulos L. 2 Gleason J. F. 2 Veefkind P. 3 Bucsela E. 4 Celarier E. A. 5 Spurr R. J. D. 6 Platnick S. 2 Science Systems and Applications Inc., Lanham, MD, USA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), de Bilt, The Netherlands SRI International, Menlo Park, CA, USA University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA RT Solutions, Cambridge, MA, USA 04 09 2009 9 17 6389 6400 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/9/6389/2009/acp-9-6389-2009.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/6389/2009/acp-9-6389-2009.pdf

Following the launch of several satellite ultraviolet and visible spectrometers including the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), much has been learned about the global distribution of nitrogen dioxide (NO<sub>2</sub>). NO<sub>2</sub>, which is mostly anthropogenic in origin, absorbs solar radiation at ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. We parameterized NO<sub>2</sub> absorption for fast radiative transfer calculations. Using this parameterization with cloud, surface, and NO<sub>2</sub> information from different sensors in the NASA A-train constellation of satellites and NO<sub>2</sub> profiles from the Global Modeling Initiative (GMI), we compute the global distribution of net atmospheric heating (NAH) due to tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> for January and July 2005. The globally-averaged NAH values due to tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> are very low: they are about 0.05 W/m<sup>2</sup>. While the impact of NO<sub>2</sub> on the global radiative forcing is small, locally it can produce instantaneous net atmospheric heating of 2–4 W/m<sup>2</sup> in heavily polluted areas. We assess the impact of clouds and find that they reduce the globally-averaged NAH values by 5–6% only. However, because most of NO<sub>2</sub> is contained in the boundary layer in polluted regions, the cloud shielding effect can significantly reduce the net atmospheric heating due to tropospheric NO<sub>2</sub> (up to 50%). We examine the effect of diurnal variations in NO<sub>2</sub> emissions and chemistry on net atmospheric heating and find only a small impact of these on the daily-averaged heating (11–14% at the most). We also examine the sensitivity of NO<sub>2</sub> absorption to various geophysical conditions. Effects of the vertical distributions of cloud optical depth and NO<sub>2</sub> on net atmospheric heating and downwelling radiance are simulated in detail for various scenarios including vertically-inhomogeneous convective clouds observed by CloudSat. The maximum effect of NO<sub>2</sub> on downwelling radiance occurs when the NO<sub>2</sub> is located in the middle part of the cloud where the optical extinction peaks.

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