An introduction to the SCOUT-AMMA stratospheric aircraft, balloons and sondes campaign in West Africa, August 2006: rationale and roadmap

A multi-platform field measurement campaign involving aircraft and balloons took place over West Africa between 26 July and 25 August 2006, in the frame of the concomitant AMMA Special Observing Period and SCOUT-O3 African tropical activities. Specifically aiming at sampling the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, the high-altitude research aircraft M55 Geophysica was deployed in Ouagadougou (12.3° N, 1.7° W), Burkina Faso, in conjunction with the German D-20 Falcon, while a series of stratospheric balloon and sonde flights were conducted from Niamey (13.5° N, 2.0° E), Niger. The stratospheric aircraft and balloon flights intended to gather experimental evidence for a better understanding of large scale transport, assessing the effect of lightning on NOx production, and studying the impact of intense mesoscale convective systems on water, aerosol, dust and chemical species in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. The M55 Geophysica carried out five local and four transfer flights between southern Europe and the Sahel and back, while eight stratospheric balloons and twenty-nine sondes were flown from Niamey. These experiments allowed a characterization of the tropopause and lower stratosphere of the region. We provide here an overview of the campaign activities together with a description of the general meteorological situation during the flights and a summary of the observations accomplished

Multi-wavelength observations of blazar AO 0235+164 in the 2008-2009 flaring state

The blazar AO 0235+164 (z = 0.94) has been one of the most active objects observed by Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) since its launch in Summer 2008. In addition to the continuous coverage by Fermi, contemporaneous observations were carried out from the radio to γ-ray bands between 2008 September and 2009 February. In this paper, we summarize the rich multi-wavelength data collected during the campaign (including F-GAMMA, GASP-WEBT, Kanata, OVRO, RXTE, SMARTS, Swift, and other instruments), examine the cross-correlation between the light curves measured in the different energy bands, and interpret the resulting spectral energy distributions in the context of well-known blazar emission models. We find that the γ-ray activity is well correlated with a series of near-IR/optical flares, accompanied by an increase in the optical polarization degree. On the other hand, the X-ray light curve shows a distinct 20 day high state of unusually soft spectrum, which does not match the extrapolation of the optical/UV synchrotron spectrum. We tentatively interpret this feature as the bulk Compton emission by cold electrons contained in the jet, which requires an accretion disk corona with an effective covering factor of 19% at a distance of 100 R g. We model the broadband spectra with a leptonic model with external radiation dominated by the infrared emission from the dusty torus. © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved

Chlorine activation on stratospheric aerosols:uncertainties in parameterizations and surface area

Abstract. Chlorine activation in the Arctic is evaluated by examining the different parameterizations for uptake coefficients on stratospheric aerosols, high-resolution in-situ measurements and vortex-wide satellite observations. The parameterizations for heterogeneous chemistry on liquid aerosols are most sensitive to temperature with the reaction rates doubling for each Kelvin increase in temperature. However, differences between the parameterizations are negligible. For Nitric Acid Trihydrate particles (NAT) the major factors of uncertainty are the number density of nucleated particles and different parameterization choices. These two factors induce an uncertainty that covers several orders of magnitude on the reaction rate. But as predicted reaction rates on liquid aerosols always exceed those on NAT the overall uncertainty is small. In-situ observations of ClOx from Arctic winters in 2005 and 2010 are used to validate the heterogeneous chemistry parameterizations. The ambient conditions for these measurements proved to be very different between those two winters with HCl being the limiting reacting partner for the 2005 measurements and ClONO2 for the 2010 measurements. Modeled levels of chlorine activation are in very good agreement with the in-situ observations and the surface area provided by Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSCs) has only a limited impact on modeled chlorine activation. This indicates that the parameterizations give a good representation of the processes in the atmosphere. Back-trajectories started on the location of the observations in 2005 indicate temperatures on the threshold for PSC formation, hence the surface area is mainly provided by the background aerosol. Still, the model shows additional chlorine activation during this time-frame, providing cautionary evidence for chlorine activation even in the absence of PSCs. Vortex-averaged satellite observations also show no definite connection between chlorine activation and PSC formation. The inter- and intra-annual variability of vortex-average HCl and HNO3 based on MLS observations is examined for the Arctic winters 2004/2005 to 2010/2011. These observations show that removal of HCl and HNO3 from the gas-phase are not correlated. HNO3 loss exhibits great inter-annual variability depending on prevailing temperatures while HCl loss is continuous through December without considerable inter- or intra-annual variability. Only the recovery of HCl in late in winter depends on the level of denitrification. Hence, the occurrence of HNO3 containing PSC particles does not seem to have a significant effect on the speed of initial chlorine activation on a vortex-wide scale. </jats:p

CRISTA-NF measurements with unprecedented vertical resolution during the RECONCILE aircraft campaign

The Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescope for the Atmosphere - New Frontiers (CRISTA-NF), an airborne infrared limb-sounder, was operated aboard the high-flying Russian research aircraft M55-Geophysica during the Arctic RECONCILE campaign from January to March 2010. This paper describes the calibration process of the instrument and the retrieval algorithm employed and then proceeds to present retrieved trace gas volume mixing ratio cross-sections for one specific flight in this campaign. We are able to resolve the uppermost troposphere/lower stratosphere for several trace gas species for several kilometres below the flight altitude (16 to 19 km) with an unprecedented vertical resolution of 400 to 500 m for the limb-sounding technique. The instrument points sideways with respect to the flight direction. Therefore, the observations are also characterised by a rather high horizontal sampling along the flight track, which provides a full vertical profile every approximate to 15 km. Assembling the vertical trace gas profiles derived from CRISTA-NF measurements to cross-sections shows filaments of vortex and extra-vortex air masses in the vicinity of the polar vortex.During this campaign, the M55-Geophysica carried further instruments enabling trace gas volume mixing ratios derived from CRISTA-NF to be validated by comparing them with measurements by the in situ instruments HAGAR and FOZAN and observations by MIPAS-STR. This validation suggests that the retrieved trace gas volume mixing ratios are both qualitatively and quantitatively reliable

Uncertainties in modeling heterogeneous chemistry and Arctic ozone depletion in the winter 2009/2010

Stratospheric chemistry and denitrification are simulated for the Arctic winter 2009/2010 with the Lagrangian Chemistry and Transport Model ATLAS. A number of sensitivity runs is used to explore the impact of uncertainties in chlorine activation and denitrification on the model results. In particular, the efficiency of chlorine activation on different types of liquid aerosol versus activation on nitric acid trihydrate clouds is examined. Additionally, the impact of changes in reaction rate coefficients, in the particle number density of polar stratospheric clouds, in supersaturation, temperature or the extent of denitrification is investigated. Results are compared to satellite measurements of MLS and ACE-FTS and to in-situ measurements onboard the Geophysica aircraft during the RECONCILE measurement campaign. It is shown that even large changes in the underlying assumptions have only a small impact on the modelled ozone loss, even though they can cause considerable differences in chemical evolution of other species and in denitrification. Differences in column ozone between the sensitivity runs stay below 10% at the end of the winter. Chlorine activation on liquid aerosols alone is able to explain the observed magnitude and morphology of the mixing ratios of active chlorine, reservoir gases and ozone. This is even true for binary aerosols (no uptake of HNO3 from the gas-phase allowed in the model). Differences in chlorine activation between sensitivity runs are within 30%. Current estimates of nitric acid trihydrate (NAT) number density and supersaturation imply that, at least for this winter, NAT clouds play a relatively small role compared to liquid clouds in chlorine activation. The change between different reaction rate coefficients for liquid or solid clouds has only a minor impact on ozone loss and chlorine activation in our sensitivity runs

CRISTA-NF measurements during the AMMA-SCOUT-O3 aircraft campaign

The Cryogenic Infrared Spectrometers and Telescopes for the Atmosphere - New Frontiers (CRISTA-NF) instrument participated in the AMMA-SCOUT-O3 measurement campaign in July and August 2006. The instrument is mounted on the high-flying Russian research aircraft M55-Geophysica and measures limb-emissions in the mid-infrared region in the tangent altitude range of about 6 to 21 km. We present a new retrieval setup which is based on 9 integrated spectral windows allowing to retrieve an extended set of trace gases and temperature fields with high vertical resolution (up to 500 m). Retrieval results are shown for temperature, water vapor (H2O), ozone (O-3), nitric acid (HNO3), peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), and aerosol extinction. Comparisons of temperature, O-3, and H2O observations with corresponding in situ measurements on-board M55-Geophysica show reasonable agreement. In particular, CRISTA-NF observations in the vicinity of the aircraft resemble horizontal variations found in the in situ measurements better than corresponding ECMWF fields

ClOOCl photolysis at high solar zenith angles Analysis of RECONCILE self-match flight

Abstract. The photolysis frequency of dichlorine peroxide (ClOOCl) JClOOCl is a critical parameter in catalytic cycles destroying ozone in the polar stratosphere. In the atmospherically relevant wavelength region, published laboratory measurements of ClOOCl absorption cross sections and spectra are not in good agreement, resulting in significant discrepancies in JClOOCl. Previous investigations of the consistency with atmospheric observations of ClO and ClOOCl have focused on the photochemical equilibrium between ClOOCl formation and photolysis, and thus could only constrain the ratio of JClOOCl over the rate constant of the ClO recombination reaction krec. Here, we constrain the atmospherically effective JClOOCl independent of krec using ClO data sampled in the same air masses before and directly after sunrise. Over sunrise, when the ClO/ClOOCl system comes out of thermal equilibrium and the influence of the ClO recombination reaction is negligible, the rise in ClO concentration is significantly faster than expected from JClOOCl based on the absorption spectrum proposed by Pope et al. (2007), but does not warrant cross sections larger than recently published values by Papanastasiou et al. (2009). In particular, the existence of a significant ClOOCl absorption band longwards of 420 nm, is effectively ruled out by our observations. Additionally, the night-time ClO observations show that the ClO/ClOOCl thermal equilibrium constant can not be significantly higher than the one proposed by Plenge et al. (2005). </jats:p