Using TES retrievals to investigate PAN in North American biomass burning plumes

We analyze new Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) PAN observations over North America from July 2006 to July 2009. Using aircraft observations from the Colorado Front Range, we demonstrate that TES can be sensitive to elevated PAN in the boundary layer (similar to 750 hPa) even in the presence of clouds.

In situ observations have shown that wildfire emissions can rapidly produce PAN, and PAN decomposition is an important component of ozone production in smoke plumes. We identify smoke-impacted TES PAN retrievals by co-location with NOAA Hazard Mapping System (HMS) smoke plumes. Depending on the year, 15-32% of cases where elevated PAN is identified in TES observations (retrievals with degrees of freedom (DOF) > 0.6) overlap smoke plumes during July.