Satellite measurements of peroxyacetyl nitrate from the Cross-Track Infrared Sounder: comparison with ATom aircraft measurements

Abstract

Abstract. We present an overview of an optimal estimation algorithm to retrieve peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) from single-field-of-view Level 1B radiances measured by the Cross-Track Infrared Sounder (CrIS). CrIS PAN retrievals show peak sensitivity in the mid-troposphere, with degrees of freedom for signal less than or equal to 1.0. We show comparisons with two sets of aircraft measurements from the Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom), the PAN and Trace Hydrohalocarbon ExpeRiment (PANTHER) and the Georgia Tech chemical ionization mass spectrometer (GT-CIMS). We find a systematic difference between the two aircraft datasets, with vertically averaged mid-tropospheric values from the GT-CIMS around 14 % lower than equivalent values from PANTHER. However, the two sets of aircraft measurements are strongly correlated (R2 value of 0.92) and do provide a consistent view of the large-scale variation of PAN. We demonstrate that the retrievals of PAN from CrIS show skill in measurement of these large-scale PAN distributions in the remote mid-troposphere compared to the retrieval prior. The standard deviation of individual CrIS–aircraft differences is 0.08 ppbv, which we take as an estimate of the uncertainty of the CrIS mid-tropospheric PAN for a single satellite field of view. The standard deviation of the CrIS–aircraft comparisons for averaged CrIS retrievals (median of 20 satellite coincidences with each aircraft profile) is lower at 0.05 ppbv. This would suggest that the retrieval error is reduced with averaging, although not with the square root of the number of observations. We find a negative bias of the order of 0.1 ppbv in the CrIS PAN results with respect to the aircraft measurements. This bias shows a dependence on column water vapor. We provide a water-vapor-dependent bias correction for use with the CrIS PAN data.