Leipzig 2002 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Downloads | Hilfe

UP: Umweltphysik

UP 9: Atmosphäre, Aerosole, Klima - Poster

UP 9.7: Poster

Montag, 18. März 2002, 16:30–18:00, Galerie 1

NO₂-Production by Lightning Estimated with GOME — •Beirle Steffen, M. Grzegorski, J. Hollwedel, S. Kühl, T. Wagner, M. Wenig, W. Wilms-Grabe, and U. Platt — Institut für Umweltphysik, Heidelberg

NO₂ is an important trace gas in the troposphere with impact on health and atmospheric chemistry, e.g. ozone production. Therefore a better understanding of the various source strengths is desirable.

Among the different sources (industry, biomass burning, aircrafts, soil emissions, lightning) the latter has the highest uncertainty (2-20 Tg[N]/yr) (Lee et al, 1997). While most studies try to estimate the NO₂ produced by one flash and get a global value by extrapolation, with satellite measurements another approach is possible.

GOME enables a global view of total NO₂ columns. With sophisticated methods also tropospheric values can be obtained (Leue et al, 2001). The observation of single lightnings is complicated by the coarse spatial resolution of GOME (40km*320km) as well as the fact that lightning is attended by clouds. However, high lightning activity shall influence the measured NO₂ value.

In this study, we relate the NO₂ received by GOME with the lightning activity measured by LIS. We regard a region in Australia, where other sources like biomass burning and industry are negligible. Between the monthly means of lightning activity and NO₂ a clear correlation can be seen.