First satellite observations of lower tropospheric ammonia and methanol
Abstract
The Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) on the EOS Aura satellite makes global measurements of infrared radiances which are used to derive profiles of species such as O_3, CO, H_2O, HDO and CH_4 as routine standard products. In addition, TES has a variety of special modes that provide denser spatial mapping over a limited geographical area. A continuous‐coverage mode (called "transect", about 460 km long) has now been used to detect additional molecules indicative of regional air pollution. On 10 July 2007 at about 05:37 UTC (13:24 LMST) TES conducted such a transect observation over the Beijing area in northeast China. Examination of the residual spectral radiances following the retrieval of the TES standard products revealed surprisingly strong features attributable to enhanced concentrations of ammonia (NH3) and methanol (CH_3OH), well above the normal background levels. This is the first time that these molecules have been detected in space‐based nadir viewing measurements that penetrate into the lower atmosphere.
Additional Information
© 2008 American Geophysical Union. Received 14 February 2008; revised 28 March 2008; accepted 1 April 2008; published 1 May 2008. This work was carried out, in part, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We also wish to thank G. Guerova (U. Wollongong) and D. Millet (Harvard U.) for kindly providing the profiles of ammonia and methanol on which these analyses rest and to the two reviewers for their helpful suggestions. All TES data are available at http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/PRODOCS/tes/table_tes.html.Attached Files
Published - Beer_et_al-2008-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf
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- Eprint ID
- 91244
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20181127-154248588
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
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2018-11-28Created from EPrint's datestamp field
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field