An intercomparison of airborne nitric oxide measurements: A second opportunity

Journal Article · Wed Jun 20 00:00:00 EDT 1990 · Journal of Geophysical Research; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/JD095iD07p10129· OSTI ID:5456948

Gregory, G L; Hoell, Jr, J M ^[1]; Torres, A L ^[2]; Carroll, M A ^[3]; Ridley, B A ^[4]; Rodgers, M O; Bradshaw, J; Sandholm, S; Davis, D D ^[5]

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1. NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA (USA)
2. NASA Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA (USA)
3. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO (USA)
4. National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (USA)
5. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta (USA)

Results from an airborne intercomparison of techniques to measure tropospheric levels of NO are discussed. The intercomaprison was part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Global Tropospheric Experiment and was conducted during the summer of 1986. Instruments intercompared included a two-photon laser-induced fluorescence system and two NO/O{sub 3} chemiluminescence detectors. These three instruments also participated in the NO intercomparisons conducted during the Chemical Instrumentation Test and Evaluation (CITE) 1 mission in 1983-1984, and therefore the current results are a revisit to the question of how well NO can be measured from an aircraft in remote tropospheric environments. The intercomparisons were weighed to mixing ratios less than 20 pptv. Results from CITE 2 were similar to those of CITE 1. The most noteworthy observation common to both campaigns is that at these low mixing ratios, agreement among the three instruments is almost always within about 15 or 20 pptv for sampling periods of 1-6 min. Analyses of multipoint data sets suggest that on the average the difference between data from any pair of the instruments at the low mixing ratios is about 5-7 pptv. Since this agreement was obtained among instruments using fundamentally different detection principles (chemiluminescent and laser) and the data suggested that all provided equally valid measurements of NO, the observed level of agreement perhaps represents the uncertainty in the current measurement of low mixing ratio ambient NO. The major question which must be addressed by the scientific community is the influence of, for example, a 5-pptv uncertainty in NO at 10 pptv in photochemistry studies, nitrogen budget studies, and so on, in the clean remote troposphere.

• OSTI ID: 5456948
• Journal Information: Journal of Geophysical Research; (United States), Vol. 95:D7; ISSN 0148-0227
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
NITRIC OXIDE
ECOLOGICAL CONCENTRATION
AIRCRAFT
ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY
CHEMILUMINESCENCE
FLUORESCENCE
LASERS
MIXING
OZONE
TROPOSPHERE
CHALCOGENIDES
CHEMISTRY
EARTH ATMOSPHERE
EVALUATION
LUMINESCENCE
NITROGEN COMPOUNDS
NITROGEN OXIDES
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
540120* - Environment
Atmospheric- Chemicals Monitoring & Transport- (1990-)
010900 - Coal
Lignite
& Peat- Environmental Aspects