Abstract
Abstract. We present the first near global upper tropospheric distribution of formic acid (HCOOH) observed from space using solar occultation measurements from the Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) on board the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) satellite. Using a new set of spectroscopic line parameters recently published for formic acid by Vander Auwera et al. (2007) and Perrin and Vander Auwera (2007), we have retrieved the concentrations of HCOOH between 5 km and the tropopause for ACE-FTS observations from February 2004 to September 2007. We observe a significant seasonal dependence for the HCOOH concentrations related to vegetation growth and biomass burning. We estimate an emission ratio of 0.0051±0.0015 for HCOOH relative to CO for tropical South American fires using a selected set of data for September 2004. Results from the balloon-borne MkIV Fourier transform spectrometer are also presented and compared with the ACE measurements.
Highlights
Formic acid is one of the more abundant organic acids in the atmosphere
4T3h1e first near global tropospheric distribution of formic acid (HCOOH) has been presented using data from the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) satel4l3it2e. 8125 extravortex profiles were used for the period be4t3w3een February 2004 and September 2007
Values up to 590 pptv have been observed for individual profiles that are likely associated with biomass burning plumes
Summary
Formic acid is one of the more abundant organic acids in the atmosphere. As a very soluble species, formic acid is found in the atmosphere as a gas and as a solute in water droplets as well as the formate anion in aerosol particles (Talbot et al, 1988). Infrared solar spectra have been used in the ground-based detection of HCOOH by Rinsland et al (2004) reporting concentrations between 0.31–0.80 ppbv as well as in previous observations by Rinsland et al (2006, 2007) and Coheur et al (2007) using ACE satellite data. G. Gonzalez Abad et al.: Global distribution of upper tropospheric formic acid from the ACE-FTS The first-space based observations of HCO3O45H using ACE data were published by Rinsland et al (2006).
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