Abstract
Abstract. We describe the design and execution of the BORTAS (Quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites) experiment, which has the overarching objective of understanding the chemical aging of air masses that contain the emission products from seasonal boreal wildfires and how these air masses subsequently impact downwind atmospheric composition. The central focus of the experiment was a two-week deployment of the UK BAe-146-301 Atmospheric Research Aircraft (ARA) over eastern Canada, based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Atmospheric ground-based and sonde measurements over Canada and the Azores associated with the planned July 2010 deployment of the ARA, which was postponed by 12 months due to UK-based flights related to the dispersal of material emitted by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, went ahead and constituted phase A of the experiment. Phase B of BORTAS in July 2011 involved the same atmospheric measurements, but included the ARA, special satellite observations and a more comprehensive ground-based measurement suite. The high-frequency aircraft data provided a comprehensive chemical snapshot of pyrogenic plumes from wildfires, corresponding to photochemical (and physical) ages ranging from < 1 day to ~
Highlights
The Quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites (BORTAS) experiment was conducted during July– August 2010 and 2011, and was funded by the UK Natural Environmental Research Council, with meteorological field support from the UK Meteorological Office and Environment Canada
The BORTAS-B experiment during 12 July–3 August 2011 has delivered a large, diverse, and publicly available dataset that brings together aircraft, ground-based, balloon, and space-borne data associated with the pyrogenic emission and subsequent transport and photochemical aging of associated air masses over Canada
We have included brief descriptions of the Canadian ground station at Dalhousie University, which included a large suite of measurements to characterize the composition of pyrogenic material at ground level and to investigate trace gases and aerosols above the site, and the Pico Mountain Atmospheric Research Observatory in the Azores, located in the free troposphere days downwind of North American fires
Summary
The Quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on Tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites (BORTAS) experiment was conducted during July– August 2010 and 2011 (phases A and B, respectively), and was funded by the UK Natural Environmental Research Council, with meteorological field support from the UK Meteorological Office and Environment Canada. Our sub-objectives include (i) sampling biomass burning outflow from boreal North America over the western boundary of the North Atlantic during summer 2011 using the UK BAe-146-301 Atmospheric Research Aircraft; (ii) describing observed chemistry within plumes by using the measurements to constrain a near-explicit chemical mechanism, with particular attention to the NOy and organic chemistry; (iii) deriving a reduced chemical mechanism suitable for a global chemistry transport model (CTM) that accurately describes chemistry within the plumes; (iv) quantifying the impact of boreal forest fires on oxidant chemistry over the temperate and subtropical Atlantic using a nested 3-D CTM, driven by a reduced version of the near-explicit chemical mechanism and by assimilated field measurements; and (v) detecting, validating and quantifying the impact of boreal biomass burning on global tropospheric composition using data from space-borne sensors.
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