Observation-based, spatial-resolved surface concentrations and their implications for emission and deposition estimation
Kang Sun1
Satellite observations provide excellent spatial and temporal coverage for the abundances of atmospheric trace constituents and have tremendously advanced our understanding of the processes governing atmospheric composition, emissions, and deposition. However, the satellite products usually only retrieve the total vertical columns of the species, whereas the concentrations near the surface are more important for human and ecosystem health, land-atmosphere exchange, and air quality. Most existing studies rely on vertical profiles from chemical transport models (e.g., the GEOS-Chem model) to infer surface concentrations from satellite total columns. Recent field aircraft campaigns (DISCOVER-AQ, KORUS-AQ, SENEX, and SEAC4RS) provide a wealth of information on the vertical distributions of critical trace species, such as NOx, HCHO, and NH3. Based on first principles in fluid mechanics, we have derived dimensionless vertical profiles for a range of reactive trace gases from aircraft measurements. Combining with spatiotemporally resolved PBL height field, these observation-based vertical profiles are then applied to scale satellite total columns, yielding surface concentrations. By oversampling these observation-based surface concentrations to a regular spatial grid, we present a spatially and temporally resolved continuous concentration dataset over the contiguous US to study reactive nitrogen deposition, the ozone-NOx-VOC sensitivity, and the evolution of surface air quality.
1University at Buffalo, kangsun@buffalo.edu