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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2004

Evaluation of GOME Satellite Measurements of Tropospheric NO2 and HCHO using Regional Data from Aircraft Campaigns in the Southeastern United States

We compare tropospheric measurements of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and formaldehyde (HCHO) from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) satellite instrument with in situ measurements over eastern Texas and the southeast United States. On aveiage, the GOME and in situ measurements of tropospheric NO2 and HCHO columns are consistent despite pronounced sampling differences. The geometric mean in situ to GOME ratios over the campaign are 1.08 for NO2 and 0.84 for HCHO, with corresponding geometric standard deviations of 1.27 and 1.38. The correlation of the observed column spatial variability between the two NO2 measurement sets is encouraging before (r2 = 0.54, n = 18) and after (r2 = 0.67, n = 18) correcting for a sampling bias. Mean relative vertical profiles of HCHO and NO2 calculated with a global three-dimensional model (GEOS-CHEM) and used in the GOME retrieval are highly consistent with in situ measurements; differences would affect the retrieved NO2 and HCHO columns by a few percent. GOME HCHO columns over eastern Texas include contributions from anthropogenic volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions but are dominated by biogenic VOC emissions at the regional scale in August-September when HCHO columns are within 20% of those over the southeastern United States. In situ measurements show that during summer the lowest 1500 m (the lower mixed layer) contains 75% of the tropospheric NO2 column over Houston and Nashville, and 60% of the HCHO column over Houston. Future validation of space-based measurements of tropospheric NO2 and HCHO columns over polluted regions should include coincident in situ measurements that span the entire satellite footprint, especially in the heterogeneous mixed layer.

Martin, R. V.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Next-Generation Aura/OMI NO2 and SO2 Products

The measurement of both SO2 and NO2 gases are recognized as an essential component of atmospheric composition missions. We describe current capabilities and limitations of the operational Aura/OMI NO2 and SO2 data that have been used by a large number of researchers. Analyses of the data and validation studies have brought to light a number of areas in which these products can be expanded and improved. Major improvements for new NASA standard (SP) NO2 product include more accurate tropospheric and stratospheric column amounts, along with much improved error estimates and diagnostics. Our approach uses a monthly NO2 climatology based on the NASA Global Modeling Initiative (GMI) chemistry-transport model and takes advantage of OMI data from cloudy scenes to find clean areas where the contribution from the trap NO2 column is relatively small. We then use a new filtering, interpolation and smoothing techniques for separating the stratospheric and tropospheric components of NO2, minimizing the influence of a priori information. The new algorithm greatly improves the structure of stratospheric features relative to the original SP. For the next-generation OMI SO2 product we plan to implement operationally the offline iterative spectral fitting (ISF) algorithm and re-process the OMI Level-2 SO2 dataset using a priori SO2 and aerosol profiles, clouds, and surface reflectivity appropriate for observation conditions. This will improve the ability to detect and quantify weak tropospheric SO2 loadings. The new algorithm is validated using aircraft in-situ data during field campaigns in China (2005 and 2008) and in Maryland (Frostburg, 2010 and DISCOVER-AQ in July 2011). The height of the SO2 plumes will also be estimated for high SO2 loading cases (e.g., volcanic eruptions). The same SO2 algorithm will be applied to the data from OMPS sensor to be launched on NPP satellite later this year. The next-generation NO2 and SO2 products will provide critical information (e.g., averaging kernels) for evaluation of chemistry-transport models, for data assimilation, and to impose top-down constraints on the SO2 and NO2 emission sources.

Krotkov, Nickolay↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Biomass burning declines lead to large net reductions in NO2 concentrations over north equatorial Africa in spite of growing fossil fuel emissions

Socio-economic development in low and middle-income countries has been accompanied by increased emissions of air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx: nitrogen dioxide (NO2) + nitric oxide (NO)), which affect human health. In sub-Saharan Africa, fossil fuel combustion has nearly doubled since 2000. At the same time, biomass burning—another important NOx source—has declined in Africa’s northern biomass burning region, attributed to changes in climate and anthropogenic fire management associated with agricultural development. Here we use satellite observations of tropospheric NO2 vertical column densities (VCDs) and burned area to identify NO2 trends and drivers over Africa. Across the northern ecosystems where biomass burning occurs—home to over 350 million people—mean annual tropospheric NO2 VCDs decreased by 4.5% from 2005 through 2017 during the biomass burning season of November through February. Reductions in burned area explained the majority of these change in NO2 VCDs, but there were also weaker relationships between changes in NO2 VCDs and fossil fuel emissions over parts of West Africa, which were stronger during rainy season. Over Africa’s biomass burning regions, NO2 VCDs tended to decrease with increasing population density up to a threshold of approximately 180 people per km2, suggesting that anthropogenic activity causes a net reduction in NO2 emissions across roughly 90% of the continent’s biomass burning regions. In contrast to the widely-held perception that socio-economic development worsens air quality in low and middle-income nations, our results suggest that countries in Africa’s northern biomass burning region are following a different pathway, resulting in regional air quality benefits. However, these benefits may be lost with increasing fossil fuel use.

Biomass burning↗
NASA NTRS2020

Assessment of NO2 Observations During DISCOVER-AQ and KORUS-AQ Field Campaigns

NASA’s Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality (DISCOVER-AQ, conducted in 2011–2014) campaign in the United States and the joint NASA and National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER) Korea–United States Air Quality Study (KORUS-AQ, conducted in 2016) in South Korea were two field study programs that provided comprehensive, integrated data sets of airborne and surface observations of atmospheric constituents, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2), with the goal of improving the interpretation of spaceborne remote sensing data. Various types of NO2 measurements were made, including in situ concentrations and column amounts of NO2 using ground- and aircraft-based instruments, while NO2 column amounts were being derived from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on the Aura satellite. This study takes advantage of these unique datasets by first evaluating in situ data taken from two different instruments on the same aircraft platform, comparing coincidently sampled profile-integrated columns from aircraft spirals with remotely sensed column observations from ground-based Pandora spectrometers, intercomparing column observations from the ground (Pandora), aircraft (in situ vertical spirals), and space (OMI), and evaluating NO2 simulations from coarse Global Modeling Initiative (GMI) and high-resolution regional models. We then use these data to interpret observed discrepancies due to differences in sampling and deficiencies in the data reduction process. Finally, we assess satellite retrieval sensitivity to observed and modeled a priori NO2 profiles. Contemporaneous measurements from two aircraft instruments that likely sample similar air masses generally agree very well but are also found to differ in integrated columns by up to 31.9 %. These show even larger differences with Pandora, reaching up to 53.9 %, potentially due to a combination of strong gradients in NO2 fields that could be missed by aircraft spirals and errors in the Pandora retrievals. OMI NO2 values are about a actor of 2 lower in these highly polluted environments due in part to inaccurate retrieval assumptions (e.g., a priori pro-files) but mostly to OMI’s large footprint (>312 km2).

Nitrogen dioxide↗
NASA NTRS2014

Aura OMI Observations of Global SO2 and NO2 Pollution from 2005 to 2013

The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), a NASA partnership with the Netherlands and Finland, flies on the NASA Aura satellite and uses reflected sunlight to measure the two critical atmospheric trace gases: nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) characterizing daily air quality. Both gases and the secondary pollutants they produce (particulate matter, PM2.5, and tropospheric ozone) are USEPA designated criteria pollutants, posing serious threats to human health and the environment (e.g., acid rain, plant damage and reduced visibility). Our group at NASA GSFC has developed and maintained OMI standard SO2 and NO2 data products. We have recently released an updated version of the standard NO2 L2 and L3 products (SP v2.1) and continue improving the algorithm. We are currently in the process of releasing next generation pollution SO2 product, based on an innovative Principal Component Analysis (PCA) algorithm, which greatly reduces the noise and biases. These new standard products provide valuable datasets for studying anthropogenic pollution on local to global scales. Here we highlight some of the OMI observed changes in air quality over several regions. Over the US average NO2 and SO2 pollution levels had decreased dramatically as a result of both technological improvements (e.g., catalytic converters on cars) and stricter regulations of emissions. We see continued decline in pollution over Europe. Over China OMI observed an increase of about 60 percent in NO2 pollution between 2005 and 2013, despite a temporal reversal of the growing trend due to both 2008 Olympic Games and the economic recession in 2009. Chinese SO2 pollution seems to have stabilized since peaking in 2007, probably due to government efforts to curb SO2 emissions from the power sector. We have also observed large increases in both SO2 and NO2 pollution particularly in Eastern India where a number of large new coal power plants had been built in recent years. We expect that further improvements in the OMI NO2 and SO2 products will allow more robust quantification of long-term trends in global air quality.

SO2↗
NASA NTRS1974

Reaction of HO2 with NO and NO2

A kinetic study is made of the reaction of HO2 with NO2, and relative rate coefficients are derived for this reaction and for the reaction of HO2 with NO. It is shown that irradiation of mixtures of N2O-O2-H2 in the presence of small amounts of NO2 at 2139 A and 25 C leads to the consumption of NO2. The results clearly indicate that NO2 is consumed during irradiation to form a product which thermally decomposes to regenerate NO2 thermally and that this product is undoubtedly HONO. In the case of mixtures of N2O-O2-H2 and N2O-O2-H2-CO in the presence of small amounts of both NO and NO2 the NO2 pressure increases initially, reaches a maximum, and then decreases at a constant rate.

Simonaitis, R.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Measurements of the total column amount of NO2 at Kislovodsk Observatory in 1979 - 1990

The results of the measurements of the NO2 total content at the 'Kislovodsk' observatory (North Caucasus 2070 m a.s.l.) in 1979-1990 are presented. The measurements were based on the absorption of the direct sunlight in the visible region of the spectrum. The variation of the NO2 content from the morning to the evening and the seasonal and year to year variations are analyzed. The less amplitude of the daily variations of the NO2 total content in comparison with the variations of the stratospheric NO2 content says about the significant insert of the tropospheric and lower stratospheric NO2 in its total content. The year to year variations of NO2 and ozone are in antiphase. Their values depends on the regional features of the atmospheric circulation. The quasibiennial oscillations of the total NO2 content are picked out.

Elansky, Nikolay F.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Current Applications of OMI Tropospheric NO2 Data for Air Quality and a Look to the Future

Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) Tropospheric NO2 products are being used to enhance the ability to monitor changes in NO2 air quality, update emission inventories, and evaluate regional air quality models. Trends in tropospheric column NO2 have been examined over the eastern United States in relation to emissions changes mandated by regulatory actions. Decreases of 20 to 40 percent over the period 2005 to 2008 were noted, largely in response to major emission reductions at power plants. The OMI data have been used to identify regions in which the opposite trend has been found. We have also used OMI NO2 in efforts to improve emission inventories for NOx emissions from soil. Lightning NOx emissions have been added to CMAQ, the US Environmental Protection Agency's regional air quality model. Evaluation of the resulting NO2 columns in the model is being conducted using the OMI NO2 observations. Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) together with the OMI NO2 data comprise a valuable tool for monitoring and predicting air quality. Looking to the future, we expect that the combination of Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2) (morning) and OMI (afternoon) data sets obtained through use of the same retrieval algorithms will substantially increase the possibility of successful integration of satellite information into regional air quality forecast models. Farther down the road, we anticipate the Geostationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GEO-CAPE) platform to supply data possibly on an hourly basis, allowing much more comprehensive analysis of air quality from space.

Pickering, Kenneth E.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Limb-Nadir Matching Using Non-Coincident NO2 Observations: Proof of Concept and the OMI-minus-OSIRIS Prototype Product

A variant of the limb-nadir matching technique for deriving tropospheric NO2 columns is presented in which the stratospheric component of the NO2 slant column density (SCD) measured by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) is removed using non-coincident profiles from the Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imaging System (OSIRIS). In order to correct their mismatch in local time and the diurnal variation of stratospheric NO2, OSIRIS profiles, which were measured just after sunrise, were mapped to the local time of OMI observations using a photochemical boxmodel. Following the profile time adjustment, OSIRIS NO2 stratospheric vertical column densities (VCDs) were calculated. For profiles that did not reach down to the tropopause, VCDs were adjusted using the photochemical model. Using air mass factors from the OMI Standard Product (SP), a new tropospheric NO2 VCD product - referred to as OMI-minus-OSIRIS (OmO) - was generated through limb-nadir matching. To accomplish this, the OMI total SCDs were scaled using correction factors derived from the next-generation SCDs that improve upon the spectral fitting used for the current operational products. One year, 2008, of OmO was generated for 60 deg S to 60 deg N and a cursory evaluation was performed. The OmO product was found to capture the main features of tropospheric NO2, including a background value of about 0.3 x 10(exp 15) molecules per sq cm over the tropical Pacific and values comparable to the OMI operational products over anthropogenic source areas. While additional study is required, these results suggest that a limb-nadir matching approach is feasible for the removal of stratospheric NO2 measured by a polar orbiter from a nadir-viewing instrument in a geostationary orbit such as Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) or Sentinel-4.

Photochemical Boxmodel↗
NASA NTRS2017

High-Resolution NO2 Observations from the Airborne Compact Atmospheric Mapper: Retrieval and Validation

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a short-lived atmospheric pollutant that serves as an air quality indicator and is itself a health concern. The Airborne Compact Atmospheric Mapper (ACAM) was flown on board the NASA UC-12 aircraft during the Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality Maryland field campaign in July 2011. The instrument collected hyperspectral remote sensing measurements in the 304-910 nm range, allowing daytime observations of several tropospheric pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2), at an unprecedented spatial resolution of 1.5 × 1.1 sq. km. Retrievals of slant column abundance are based on the differential optical absorption spectroscopy method. For the air mass factor computations needed to convert these retrievals to vertical column abundance, we include high-resolution information for the surface reflectivity by using bidirectional reflectance distribution function data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. We use high-resolution simulated vertical distributions of NO2 from the Community Multiscale Air Quality and Global Modeling Initiative models to account for the temporal variation in atmospheric NO2 to retrieve middle and lower tropospheric NO2 columns (NO2 below the aircraft). We compare NO2 derived from ACAM measurements with in situ observations from NASA's P-3B research aircraft, total column observations from the ground-based Pandora spectrometers, and tropospheric column observations from the space-based Ozone Monitoring Instrument. The high-resolution ACAM measurements not only give new insights into our understanding of atmospheric composition and chemistry through observation of subsampling variability in typical satellite and model resolutions, but they also provide opportunities for testing algorithm improvements for forthcoming geostationary air quality missions.

Lamsal, L. N.↗
NASA NTRS2021

Reductions in NO2 Burden Over North Equatorial Africa from Decline in Biomass Burning in Spite of Growing Fossil Fuel Use, 2005 to 2017

Socioeconomic development in low- and middle-income countries has been accompanied by increased emissions of air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides [NOx: nitrogen dioxide (NO2) + nitric oxide (NO)], which affect human health. In sub-Saharan Africa, fossil fuel combustion has nearly doubled since 2000. At the same time, landscape biomass burning—another important NOx source—has declined in north equatorial Africa, attributed to changes in climate and anthropogenic fire management. Here, we use satellite observations of tropospheric NO2 vertical column densities (VCDs) and burned area to identify NO2 trends and drivers over Africa. Across the northern ecosystems where biomass burning occurs—home to hundreds of millions of people—mean annual tropospheric NO2 VCDs decreased by 4.5% from 2005 through 2017 during the dry season of November through February. Reductions in burned area explained the majority of variation in NO2 VCDs, though changes in fossil fuel emissions also explained some variation. Over Africa’s biomass burning regions, raising mean GDP density (USD·km−2) above its lowest levels is associated with lower NO2 VCDs during the dry season, suggesting that economic development mitigates net NO2 emissions during these highly polluted months. In contrast to the traditional notion that socioeconomic development increases air pollutant concentrations in low- and middle-income nations, our results suggest that countries in Africa’s northern biomass-burning region are following a different pathway during the fire season, resulting in potential air quality benefits. However, these benefits may be lost with increasing fossil fuel use and are absent during the rainy season.

air pollution↗
NASA NTRS2021

Continental and Ecoregion-Specific Drivers of Atmospheric NO2 and NH3 Seasonality Over Africa Revealed by Satellite Observations

Ammonia (NH3) and nitrogen oxides (NOx: nitrogen dioxide (NO2) + nitric oxide (NO)) play important roles in atmospheric chemistry. Throughout most of Africa, emissions of these gases are predominantly from soils and biomass burning. Here we use observations of tropospheric NO2 vertical column densities (VCDs) from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) from 2005 through 2017 and atmospheric NH3 VCDs from the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) from 2008 through 2017 to evaluate seasonal variation of NO2 and NH3 VCDs across Africa and in seven African ecoregions. In regions where mean annual precipitation (MAP) is under 500 mm/yr we find that NO2 and NH3 VCDs are positively related to monthly precipitation, and where MAP is between 500 and 1750 mm yr-1 or higher, NO2 VCDs are negatively related to monthly precipitation. In dry ecoregions, temperature and precipitation were important predictors of NH3 and NO2 VCDs, likely related to variation in soil emissions. In mesic ecoregions, monthly NO2 VCDs were strongly related to burned area, suggesting that biomass burning drives seasonality. NH3 VCDs in mesic ecoregions were positively related to both monthly temperature and monthly CO VCDs, suggesting that a mixture of soil and biomass burning emissions influenced NH3 seasonality. In northern mesic ecoregions monthly temperature explained most of the variance in monthly NH3 VCDs, suggesting that soil sources, including animal excreta, determined NH3 seasonality. In southern mesic ecoregions, monthly CO VCDs explained more variation in NH3 VCDs than temperature, suggesting that biomass burning may have greater influence over NH3 seasonality.

Jonathan E. Hickman↗
NASA NTRS2022

Polarization performance simulation for the GeoXO atmospheric composition instrument: NO2 retrieval impacts

NOAA’s Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) constellation will continue and expand on the capabilities of the current generation of geostationary satellite systems to support US weather, ocean, atmosphere, and climate operations. It is planned to consist of a dedicated atmospheric composition instrument (ACX) to support air quality forecasting and monitoring by providing similar capabilities to missions such as TEMPO (Tropospheric Emission: Monitoring Pollution), currently planned to launch in 2023, and Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), TROPOMI (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument), and GEMS (Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer) currently in operation. As the early phases of ACX development are progressing, design trade-offs are being considered to understand the relationship between instrument design choices and trace gas retrieval impacts. Some of these choices will affect the instrument polarization sensitivity (PS), which can have radiometric impacts on environmental satellite observations. We conducted a study to investigate how such radiometric impacts can affect NO2 retrievals by exploring their sensitivities to time of day, location, and scene type with an ACX instrument model that incorporates PS. The study addresses the basic steps of operational NO2 retrievals: the spectral fitting step and the conversion of slant column to vertical column via the air mass factor (AMF). The spectral fitting step was performed by generating at-sensor radiance from a clear sky scene with a known NO2 amount, the application of an instrument model including both instrument PS and noise, and a physical retrieval. The spectral fitting step was found to mitigate the impacts of instrument PS. The AMF-related step was considered for clear sky and partially cloudy scenes, where instrument PS can lead to errors in interpreting the cloud content, propagating to AMF errors and finally to NO2 retrieval errors. For this step, the NO2 retrieval impacts were small but non-negligible for high NO2 amounts; we estimated that a typical high NO2 amount can cause maximum of 0.25 x 10^15 molecules/cm^2 for a PS of 5%. These simulation capabilities were designed to aid in the development of a GeoXO atmospheric composition instrument that will improve our ability to monitor and understand the Earth’s atmosphere.

trace gases↗
NASA NTRS2022

Polarization Performance Simulation for the GeoXO Atmospheric Composition Instrument: NO2 Retrieval Impacts

NOAA's Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) constellation will continue and expand on the capabilities of the current generation of geostationary satellite systems to support US weather, ocean, atmosphere, and climate operations. It is planned to consist of a dedicated atmospheric composition instrument (ACX) to support air quality forecasting and monitoring by providing capabilities similar to missions such as TEMPO (Tropospheric Emission: Monitoring Pollution), currently planned to launch in 2023, as well as OMI (Ozone Monitoring Instrument), TROPOMI (TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument), and GEMS (Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer) currently in operation. As the early phases of ACX development are progressing, design trade-offs are being considered to understand the relationship between instrument design choices and trace gas retrieval impacts. Some of these choices will affect the instrument polarization sensitivity (PS), which can have radiometric impacts on environmental satellite observations. We conducted a study to investigate how such radiometric impacts can affect NO2 retrievals by exploring their sensitivities to time of day, location, and scene type with an ACX instrument model that incorporates PS. The study addresses the basic steps of operational NO2 retrievals: the spectral fitting step and the conversion of slant column to vertical column via the air mass factor (AMF). The spectral fitting step was performed by generating at-sensor radiance from a clear-sky scene with a known NO2 amount, the application of an instrument model including both instrument PS and noise, and a physical retrieval. The spectral fitting step was found to mitigate the impacts of instrument PS. The AMF-related step was considered for clear-sky and partially cloudy scenes, for which instrument PS can lead to errors in interpreting the cloud content, propagating to AMF errors and finally to NO2 retrieval errors. For this step, the NO2 retrieval impacts were small but non-negligible for high NO2 amounts; we estimated that a typical high NO2 amount can cause a maximum retrieval error of 0.25×1015 molec. cm−2 for a PS of 5 %. These simulation capabilities were designed to aid in the development of a GeoXO atmospheric composition instrument that will improve our ability to monitor and understand the Earth's atmosphere.

Aaron Pearlman↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NO2 Anomalies - Economy Attribution and Rapid Climate Response

Using principal component (PC) analysis of 16 years of monthly series of NO2 from OMI/Aura, we show that it is the third PC (PC3) from the full hierarchy of principal modes that is best coupled with the economic indicators. This coupling is positive, i.e. PC3 and economic indicators manifest positive covariance. However, the economic variability can explain only 40% of the information in PC3. Furthermore, this mode by itself explains only 3% of the total deseasonalized NO2 variability. We thus conclude that, while having an unambiguous impact, the economy can be awarded at best third order of importance in driving the deseasonalized NO2 series, i.e. after seasonal variability is removed from the series. Once we identified PC3 as the NO2 mode that is coupled with economic variability, we use this mode as an indicator and look for rapid climate adjustments to that part of NO2 variability that we are confident is coupled with the economic variability. We focus on observational data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on board of NASA Aqua satellite, decompose series of surface skin temperature and clear-sky outgoing longwave radiances (OLR) into principal components, and identify potential impacts of NO2 PC3 on these climate variables.

NO2↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NO2 Anomalies - Economy Attribution and Rapid Climate Response

Using principal component (PC) analysis of 16 years of monthly series of NO2 from OMI/Aura, we show that it is the third PC (PC3) from the full hierarchy of principal modes that is best coupled with the economic indicators. This coupling is positive, i.e. PC3 and economic indicators manifest positive covariance. However, the economic variability can explain only 40%of the information in PC3. Furthermore, this mode by itself explains only 3% of the total deseasonalized NO2 variability. We thus conclude that, while having an unambiguous impact, the economy can be awarded at best third order of importance in driving the deseasonalized NO2 series, i.e. after seasonal variability is removed from the series. Once we identified PC3 as the NO2 mode that is coupled with economic variability, we use this mode as an indicator and look for rapid climate adjustments to that part of NO2 variability that we are confident is coupled with the economic variability. We focus on observational data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on board of NASA Aqua satellite, decompose series of surface skin temperature and clear-sky outgoing longwave radiances (OLR) into principal components, and identify potential impacts of NO2 PC3 on these climate variables.

NO2↗
NASA NTRS1972

The reaction of H2O2 with NO2 and NO

The reactions of NO and NO2 with H2O2 have been examined at 25 C. Reaction mixtures were monitored by continuously bleeding through a pinhole into a monopole mass spectrometer. NO2 was also monitored by its optical absorption in the visible part of the spectrum. Reaction mixtures containing initially 1.5 - 2.5 torr of NO2 and 0.8 - 1.4 torr of H2O2 or 1 - 12 torr of NO and 0.5 - 1.5 torr of H2O2 were studied. The H2O2 - NO reaction was complex. There was an induction period followed by a marked acceleration in reactant removal. The final products of the reaction, NO2, probably H2O, and possibly HONO2 were produced mainly after all the H2O2 was removed. The HONO intermediate was shown to disproportionate to NO2 + NO + H2O in a relatively slow first order reaction. The acceleration in H2O2 removal after the NO - H2O2 reaction is started is caused by NO2 catalysis.

Gray, D.↗
NASA NTRS1985

Space shuttle ram glow: Implication of NO2 recombination continuum

The ram glow data gathered to data from imaging experiments on space shuttle suggest the glow is a continuum (within 34 angstrom resolution); the continuum shape is such that the peak is near 7000 angstroms decreasing to the blue and red, and the average molecular travel leading to emission after leaving the surface is 20 cm (assuming isotropic scattering from the surface). Emission continuum is rare in molecular systems but the measured spectrum does resemble the laboratory spectrum of NO2 (B) recombination continuum. The thickness of the observed emission is consistent with the NO2 hypothesis given an exit velocity of approx. 2.5 km/sec (1.3 eV) which leaves approx. 3.7 eV of ramming OI energy available for unbonding the recombined NO2 from the surface. The NO2 is formed in a 3-body recombination of OI + NO + m = NO2 + m where OI originates from the atmosphere and NO is chemically formed on the surface from atmospheric NI and OI. The spacecraft surface then acts as the n for the reaction: Evidence exists from orbital mass spectrometer data that the NO and NO2 chemistry described in this process does occur on surfaces of spectrometer orifices in orbit. Surface temperature effects are likely a factor in the NO sticking efficiency and, therefore, glow intensities.

Swenson, G. R.↗