Detection of biomass burning combustion products in the atmosphere from UV/VIS backscatter measurements taken by the GOME spectrometer

Werner Thomas; Albrecht von Bargen; Ernst Hegels; Sander Slijkhuis; Kelly Van Chance; Robert J. D. Spurr

doi:10.1117/12.364175

16 September 1999 Detection of biomass burning combustion products in the atmosphere from UV/VIS backscatter measurements taken by the GOME spectrometer

Werner Thomas, Albrecht von Bargen, Ernst Hegels, Sander Slijkhuis, Kelly Van Chance, Robert J. D. Spurr

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 3821, Environmental Sensing and Applications; (1999) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.364175
Event: Industrial Lasers and Inspection (EUROPTO Series), 1999, Munich, Germany

Abstract

The Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) is a new atmospheric chemistry instrument on-board the ERS-2 satellite which was launched in April 1995. The GOME is designed to measure a range of atmospheric trace constituents, with particular emphasis on global ozone distributions. We show that atmospheric UV/visible backscatter spectra obtained by the GOME spectrometer may be used to retrieve column amounts of key trace species associated with smoke cloud combustion from biomass burning events. We focus on the severe rain forest burning in SE Asia from August to October 1997. The current operational GOME Data Processor (GDP) was used to retrieve column distributions of NO₂ and CH₂O in and around the smoke-polluted region. For ground scenes with low cloudiness, the differential optical absorption spectroscopy technique (DOAS) applied to backscatter spectra yields column distributions of NO₂ and CH₂O in and around the smoke- polluted region. An increase by almost a factor of two of the vertical NO₂ content in the tropical atmosphere is apparent over a large area within the smoke cloud; this clearly indicates the ability of GOME to measure tropospheric NO₂ content. CH₂O is detected only in areas closest to combustion sources and the detected slant column amounts correspond with previous estimations of vertical column amounts of CH₂O for biomass savannah burning.

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Werner Thomas, Albrecht von Bargen, Ernst Hegels, Sander Slijkhuis, Kelly Van Chance, and Robert J. D. Spurr "Detection of biomass burning combustion products in the atmosphere from UV/VIS backscatter measurements taken by the GOME spectrometer", Proc. SPIE 3821, Environmental Sensing and Applications, (16 September 1999); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.364175

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KEYWORDS

NOx

Combustion

Aerosols

Clouds

Absorption

Backscatter

Ozone

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