UC Irvine

As part of the Photochemical Ozone Budget of the Eastern North Pacific Atmosphere (PHOBEA) project, we made observations of CO, O3, NOx, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), nonmethane hydrocarbons (NMHC), Rn, aerosol scattering, aerosol absorption, and aerosol number density during the springs of 1997 and 1998 at the Cheeka Peak Observatory (CPO) on the western tip of Washington State. The data have been segregated to quantify the mixing ratio of these species in the Pacific marine atmosphere. However, even in these marine air masses, there are occasionally substantial enhancements of NOx and aerosols, but not CO, which we attribute to diesel exhaust from ship traffic to and from major ports in the region. The marine air masses were further classified into four categories based on 10-day back isentropic trajectories; high, mid, and low latitude and those which had crossed over the Asian industrial region. Mean marine mixing ratios in 1998 were significantly higher then the 1997 values for CO (1997 mean equal to 151, 1998 mean equal to 170 ppbv), ethane (1771, 1968 parts per trillion by volume (pptv)), and ethyne (306, 452 pptv). Also, segregation of the 1998 data by air mass origin produced smaller differences in the mixing ratios for most species when comparing different source regions. We attribute both of these results to elevated emissions associated with unusually large areas of biomass burning which took place in Indonesia and Siberia during late 1997 and 1998. The relative enhancements of CO, ethane, ethyne, and propane we observed at CPO are consistent with enhanced biomass burning and industrial sources in the spring of 1998, relative to the spring of 1997. Copyright 2001 by the American Geophysical Union.