Impact of the assimilation of ozone from the tropospheric emission spectrometer on surface ozone across North America

Authors

M. Parrington, University of Toronto
D. B.A. Jones, University of Toronto
K. W. Bowman, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
A. M. Thompson, Environment and Climate Change Canada
D. W. Tarasick, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory
J. Merrill, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
S. J. Oltmans, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
T. Leblanc, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
J. C. Witte, Pennsylvania State University
D. B. Millet, University of Rhode Island

Document Type

Article

Date of Original Version

2-28-2009

Abstract

We examine the impact of assimilating ozone observations from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) on North American surface ozone abundances in the GEOS-Chem model in August 2006. The assimilation reduces the negative bias in the modeled free tropospheric ozone, which enhances the ozone flux into the boundary layer. Surface ozone abundances increased by as much as 9 ppb in western North America and by less than 2 ppb in the southeast, resulting in a total background source of ozone of 20-40 ppb. The enhanced ozone in the model reduced the model bias with respect to surface ozone observations in the western USA, but exacerbated it in the east. This increase in the bias in the boundary layer in the east, despite the agreement between the assimilation and ozonesonde measurements in the free troposphere, suggests errors in the ozone sources or sinks or in boundary layer mixing in the model. © 2009.

Publication Title, e.g., Journal

Geophysical Research Letters

Volume

36

Issue

4

Citation/Publisher Attribution

Parrington, M., D. B. Jones, K. W. Bowman, A. M. Thompson, D. W. Tarasick, J. Merrill, S. J. Oltmans, T. Leblanc, J. C. Witte, and D. B. Millet. "Impact of the assimilation of ozone from the tropospheric emission spectrometer on surface ozone across North America." Geophysical Research Letters 36, 4 (2009). doi: 10.1029/2008GL036935.