Nighttime reactive nitrogen measurements from stratospheric infrared thermal emission observations

Abstract

Infrared thermal emission spectra of the Earth's atmosphere in the 700–2000 cm−1 region were obtained with a cryogenically cooled high‐resolution interferometer spectrometer on a balloon flight from Palestine, Texas, on September 15–16, 1986. The observations exhibit spectral features of a number of stratospheric constituents, including important species of the reactive nitrogen family. In this paper we present an analysis of the observed data for simultaneously measured vertical distributions of O3, H2O, N2O, NO2, N2O5, HNO3, and ClONO2. These measurements permit the first direct determination of the nighttime total reactive nitrogen concentrations, and the partitioning of the important elements of the NOx family. Comparisons of the total reactive nitrogen budget are made with the measurements by the ATMOS experiment and with the predictions of one‐dimensional and two‐dimensional photochemical models.