An intercomparison of airborne nitric acid measurements

Abstract

Results from an airborne intercomparison of techniques to measure tropospheric levels of nitric acid are discussed. The intercomparison 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 denuder tube collection system (DENUDER) with chemiluminescent detection, a niylon filter collection system (FILTER) with ion chromatography detection, and a tunable diode laser (TDLAS) multipath absorption system. Intercomparison of investigators' calibration standards were also performed as part of the test protocol. While results were somewhat “soft” and data sparse, these tests suggested that the TDLAS measurements might be high compared to the other techniques. Airborne intercomparisons were conducted predominately in the free troposphere and included encounters with marine and continental air masses. While the intercomparisons included mixing ratios to 1000 parts per trillion by volume (pptv), the majority of the results were for mixing ratios of <300 pptv. The TDLAS participated in an intercomparison of NO2 instruments (major focus) that was also conducted during the same flights. As a result the TDLAS data set is limited. Further, a significant fraction of the nitric acid measurements were below the TDLAS detection limit (75 pptv as configured for these tests). While the lack of simultaneous measurements from the three instruments limits the conclusions that can be drawn, it is clear that there can be substantial disagreement among the three techniques, even at mixing ratios above their respective detection limits. Equally clear is that at mixing ratios below 150 pptv there is very little correlation between their results. Based on these observations, an overall conclusion from the intercomparison is that none of the HNO3 techniques can be identified to unambiguously (e.g., 20% accuracy) provide measurements of HNO3 at levels often encountered in the free troposphere (e.g., 100 pptv). However, at the more elevated levels of HNO3 (e.g., >150 pptv), both the FILTER and DENUDER techniques reported the same levels of nitric acid, while as suggested by the results from the standards intercomparison, the TDLAS reported higher nitric acid values than the other two techniques.