Observation of pollution trace gases above the North Atlantic with the imaging Fourier transform spectrometer GLORIA

Left: Distributions of C₂H₆ and PAN, measured on September 13, 2017, with the airborne Gimballed Limb Observer for Radiance Imaging of the Atmosphere (GLORIA) above Great Britain and the North Sea. Right: Corresponding simulations of the ECHAM5/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC) model. The grey line indicates the flight altitude and the dashed violet lines the dynamical tropopause (2 and 4 PVU), determined from ECMWF data.

Around 14:30 and 17:00 UTC, strong enhancements of C₂H₆, PAN and of other pollutants were observed in the upper troposphere (UT) south of Ireland and near the coastline of the Netherlands, respectively. The measured C₂H₆ distribution is qualitatively well reproduced by the EMAC model. The principal behaviour of enhanced PAN values in the UT is also captured by EMAC, but the measured small-scale variations are not reproduced.

More details in: https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-8213-2021.