Abstract

Satellite observations of carbon monoxide (CO) from the MOPITT instrument are combined with measurements from the TRACE-P aircraft mission over the northwest Pacific, and with a global 3-D chemical transport model (GEOS-CHEM), to quantify Asian pollution outflow and its transpacific transport during spring 2001. Global CO column distributions in MOPITT and GEOS-CHEM are highly correlated (R2=0.87) with no significant model bias. The largest regional bias is over southeast Asia where the model is 18% too high. A 60% decrease of regional biomass burning emissions in the model (to 39 Tg yr-1) would correct the discrepancy; this result is consistent with TRACE-P observations. MOPITT and TRACE-P also give consistent constraints on the Chinese source of CO from fuel combustion (181 Tg CO yr-1). Four major events of transpacific transport of Asian pollution in spring 2001 were seen by MOPITT, in-situ platforms, and GEOS-CHEM. One of them was sampled by TRACE-P (February 26-27) as a succession of pollution layers over the northeast Pacific. These layers all originated from one single event of Asian outflow that split into northern and southern plumes over the central Pacific. The northern plume (sampled at 6-8 km off California) had no ozone enhancement. The southern subsiding plume (sampled at 2-4 km west of Hawaii) contained a 8-17 ppbv ozone enhancement driven by decomposition of peroxyacetylnitrate (PAN) to nitrogen oxides (NOx). This result suggests that PAN decomposition in transpacific pollution plumes subsiding over the United States could lead to significant enhancements of surface ozone.