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Quantifying spatial and temporal variability in atmospheric ammonia with in situ and space-based observations--article
Citation:
PINDER, R. W., J. T. WALKER, JR., J. O. BASH, K. E. Cady-Pereira, D. K. Henze, M. Luo, G. B. Osterman, AND M. W. Shephard. Quantifying spatial and temporal variability in atmospheric ammonia with in situ and space-based observations--article. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS. American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC, 38:L04802, (2011).
Impact/Purpose:
journal article
Description:
Ammonia plays an important role in many biogeochemical processes, yet atmospheric mixing ratios are not well known. Recently, methods have been developed for retrieving NH3 from space-based observations, but they have not been compared to in situ measurements. We have conducted a field campaign combining co-located surface measurements and satellite special observations from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES). Our study includes 25 surface monitoring sites spanning 350 km across eastern North Carolina, a region with large seasonal and spatial variability in NH3. From the TES spectra, we retrieve a NH3 representative volume mixing ratio (RVMR), and we restrict our analysis to times when the region of the atmosphere observed by TES is representative of the surface measurement. We find that the TES NH3 RVMR captures the seasonal and spatial variability found in eastern North Carolina. Both surface measurements and TES NH3 show a strong correspondence with the number of livestock facilities within 10 km of the observation. Furthermore, we find that TES NH3 RVMR captures the month-to-month variability present in the surface observations. The high correspondence with in situ measurements and vast spatial coverage make TES NH3 RVMR a valuable tool for understanding regional and global NH3 fluxes.
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Quantifying spatial and temporal variability in atmospheric ammo
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1109 WALKER.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 273 KB, about PDF)