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| Titel |
DOAS measurements of NO2 from an ultralight aircraft between Thailand and Belgium |
| VerfasserIn |
Alexis Merlaud, Caroline Fayt, Xavier Toledo, Jeroen van Gent, Olivier Ronveaux, Michel Van Roozendael |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2011
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 13 (2011) |
| Datensatznummer |
250054506
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a major air pollutant in urban and peri-urban areas, where traffic,
power plants, industries and other fuel burning activities are its dominant sources. At
high concentration it leads to respiratory problems. NO2 also contributes to the
photochemical smog forming above many cities and to aerosols and tropospheric
ozone production. NO2 is monitored continuously from ground-based networks and
satellite-borne instruments such as the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). However,
ground-based stations are sparse and mainly installed in rich countries, whereas satellite
data suffers a lack of horizontal resolution compared to the current grids of the
Chemistry and Transport Models (CTM). Local measurements are necessary to
improve our knowledge of the NO2 distribution in countries with few ground-based
stations.
The Earth Challenge project consisted in an expedition of seven pilots onboard four
ultralight aircraft between Australia and Belgium, with the aim of drawing the public
attention on environmental issues. The flights were performed in two parts, mainly
during April and November 2009 with a break in Thailand due to the monsoon.
We took opportunity of this mission, covering 27000 km above e.g. Bangladesh,
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, to install a compact DOAS instrument onboard one of the
aircraft, primarily dedicated to NO2 measurements. The instrument recorded spectra
in limb geometry. We present the data analysis strategy, interesting parts of the
flights and comparisons with satellite NO2 measurements. For large sources like
megacities both data sets are quantitatively consistent but our method enables us to
detect more detailed variations in NO2 content than can be observed by satellites. |
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