An intercomparison of airborne nitric acid measurements

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Results from an airborne intercomparison of techniques to measure tropospheric levels of nitric acid are discussed. The intercomparison was part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Global Tropospheric Experiment and was conducted during the summer of 1986. Instruments intercompared included a denuder tube collection system (DENUDER) with chemiluminescent detection, a niylon filter collection system (FILTER) with ion chromatography detection, and a tunable diode laser (TDLAS) multipath absorption system. Intercomparison of investigators' calibration standards were also performed as part of the test protocol. While results were somewhat “soft” and data sparse, these tests suggested that the TDLAS measurements might be high compared to the other techniques. Airborne intercomparisons were conducted predominately in the free troposphere and included encounters with marine and continental air masses. While the intercomparisons included mixing ratios to 1000 parts per trillion by volume (pptv), the majority of the results were for mixing ratios of 150 pptv), both the FILTER and DENUDER techniques reported the same levels of nitric acid, while as suggested by the results from the standards intercomparison, the TDLAS reported higher nitric acid values than the other two techniques.

This publication has 21 references indexed in Scilit: