Abstract
Abstract. Since 1994, the In-service Aircraft for a Global Observing System (IAGOS) program has produced in situ measurements of the atmospheric composition during more than 51 000 commercial flights. In order to help analyze these observations and understand the processes driving the observed concentration distribution and variability, we developed the SOFT-IO tool to quantify source–receptor links for all measured data. Based on the FLEXPART particle dispersion model (Stohl et al., 2005), SOFT-IO simulates the contributions of anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions from the ECCAD emission inventory database for all locations and times corresponding to the measured carbon monoxide mixing ratios along each IAGOS flight. Contributions are simulated from emissions occurring during the last 20 days before an observation, separating individual contributions from the different source regions. The main goal is to supply added-value products to the IAGOS database by evincing the geographical origin and emission sources driving the CO enhancements observed in the troposphere and lower stratosphere. This requires a good match between observed and modeled CO enhancements. Indeed, SOFT-IO detects more than 95 % of the observed CO anomalies over most of the regions sampled by IAGOS in the troposphere. In the majority of cases, SOFT-IO simulates CO pollution plumes with biases lower than 10–15 ppbv. Differences between the model and observations are larger for very low or very high observed CO values. The added-value products will help in the understanding of the trace-gas distribution and seasonal variability. They are available in the IAGOS database via http://www.iagos.org. The SOFT-IO tool could also be applied to similar data sets of CO observations (e.g., ground-based measurements, satellite observations). SOFT-IO could also be used for statistical validation as well as for intercomparisons of emission inventories using large amounts of data.
Highlights
Tropospheric pollution is a global problem caused mainly by natural or human-triggered biomass burning and anthropogenic emissions related to fossil fuel extraction and burning
In the Cammas et al (2009) study, observations of high carbon monoxide (CO) during summer in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere east of Canada were guessed to originate from biomass burning over Canada as this region is often associated with pyro-convection, the intensity of which usually peaks in the summer
In the three layers (LT, middle troposphere (MT) and upper troposphere (UT)), detection rates are higher than 95 % and even close to 100 % in the lower troposphere (LT), where CO anomalies are often related to short-range transport
Summary
Tropospheric pollution is a global problem caused mainly by natural or human-triggered biomass burning and anthropogenic emissions related to fossil fuel extraction and burning. Our methodology uses the FLEXPART Lagrangian particle dispersion model (Stohl et al, 2005) and emission inventories from the Emissions of atmospheric Compounds & Compilation of Ancillary Data (ECCAD) emission database (Granier et al, 2012) in order to quantify the influence of emission sources on the IAGOS CO measurements. The methodology is focused on the development of a scientific tool (SOFT-IO version 1.0) based on FLEXPART particle dispersion model, that simulates the contributions of anthropogenic and biomass burning emissions for IAGOS CO measurements. This tool, which has the benefit of being adaptable to multiple emission inventories without rerunning FLEXPART simulations, is described and evaluated in the present study with the large data sets of IAGOS CO measurements. We discuss the limitations of the methodology by estimating its sensitivity to different input data sets (emission inventories, meteorological analyses)
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