Nitrogen oxide photochemistry in marine air over the eastern Pacific

Abstract

Models predict that photochemistry is the primary contribution to the observed spring surface ozone maxima in the Northern Hemisphere. Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are the limiting reagents for photochemical ozone production. This fact leads to an apparent paradox, because the short lifetime of NOx should lead to a low mixing ratio of NOx far from source regions. However, chemical reservoirs of NOx such as peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) may provide a transport pathway for delivering NOx to 'clean' marine Pacific air masses. A coastal site in Washington, was chosen to investigate the relationship of NOx, PAN and ozone in marine air from the Pacific during two consecutive spring campaigns in 1997 and 1998. In this work, we develop a simple PAN decomposition model and comparie the modeled to the measured PAN mixing ratios. We estimate ozone formation using the deviation in the measured NO to NO₂ ratio, from the Leighton cycle.