Abstract
The HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO) programme has completed three of five planned aircraft transects spanning the Pacific from 85 ° N to 67 ° S, with vertical profiles every approximately 2.2 ° of latitude. Measurements include greenhouse gases, long-lived tracers, reactive species, O(2)/N(2) ratio, black carbon (BC), aerosols and CO(2) isotopes. Our goals are to address the problem of determining surface emissions, transport strength and patterns, and removal rates of atmospheric trace gases and aerosols at global scales and to provide strong tests of satellite data and global models. HIPPO data show dense pollution and BC at high altitudes over the Arctic, imprints of large N(2)O sources from tropical lands and convective storms, sources of pollution and biogenic CH(4) in the Arctic, and summertime uptake of CO(2) and sources for O(2) at high southern latitudes. Global chemical signatures of atmospheric transport are imaged, showing remarkably sharp horizontal gradients at air mass boundaries, weak vertical gradients and inverted profiles (maxima aloft) in both hemispheres. These features challenge satellite algorithms, global models and inversion analyses to derive surface fluxes. HIPPO data can play a crucial role in identifying and resolving questions of global sources, sinks and transport of atmospheric gases and aerosols.
Highlights
Future action on climate change requires us to be able to distinguish surface emissions of greenhouse gases directly associated with human activities from indirect effects of climate change and from natural variations
Global scale atmospheric chemistry‐transport models (ACTMs) have difficulty resolving sharp chemical gradients, such as exist at airmass boundaries, at the tropopause (Pan et al, 2010; Ishijima et al, 2010) or in plumes of tracers emanating from strong source regions, a limitation inherent in the numerical methods used in the Eulerian model framework [Rastigejev et al, 2010]
A model may reproduce these smoothed gradients with simulated rates of transport across air mass boundaries that are significantly in error, leading to incorrect surface fluxes inferred from an inverse analysis
Summary
“HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO): Fine-Grained, Global-Scale Measurements of Climatically Important Atmospheric Gases and Aerosols.”. HIAPER PoletoPole Observations (HIPPO): Fine grained, global scale measurements of climatically important atmospheric gases and aerosols S. The HIPPO Science Team, and cooperating modelers and satellite teams: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA: S. Wang; National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO USA: B. Hall; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ USA: M. Diao University of California at San Diego: R. Bent; University of Miami, Miami, FL: E. Flemming; University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada: R. Jones; National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research, Wellington, New Zealand: S.
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