We measure carbonaceous aerosol in Beijing with different sampling configurations and frequencies. It is commonly believed that increasing sampling duration can reduce the influence of the positive sampling artifact and meanwhile does not affect the EC measurement. However, here we demonstrate that this is not necessarily the case. Particularly, we find that the negative sampling artifact of a bare quartz filter could be remarkably enhanced due to the uptake of water vapor by the filter medium.

We derive a yes/no requirement for the usefulness of an O2 lidar as part of the ASCENDS mission that incorporates errors due to atmospheric state misspecification as well as instrumental noise. We find that the larger the CO2 instrument's sensitivity to surface pressure errors, the lower the precision requirement for the O2 instrument to be useful. In particular, the 2um CO2 instrument would benefit the most from the inclusion of an O2 lidar with high precision retrievals of surface pressure.

Any radiometer at a fixed location has a biased view when observing a convoluted, three-dimensional urban canopy. The bias of various sensor views (nadir, oblique, hemispherical) is quantified. The error in inferring surface temperatures ranged between -2.6 and +2.9K relative to the complete surface temperature. For a hemispherical pyrgeometer, it was found that above 3.5 times the mean building height the horizontal positional error is less than the typical accuracy of such sensors.

The performance of 20 European laboratories involved in long-term non-methane hydrocarbon (NMHC) measurements was assessed with respect to ACTRIS and GAW data quality objectives. The participants were asked to measure both a 30-component NMHC mixture in nitrogen and whole air. The NMHCs were analysed either by GC-FID or GC-MS. Most systems performed well for the NMHC in nitrogen, whereas in air more scatter was observed. Reasons for this are explained in the paper.

A photochemical source of peroxycarboxylic nitric anhydrides (PANs) in which a dialkyl ketone (acetone, diethyl-, di-isopropyl, or di-n-propyl ketone) in the presence of oxygen and nitric oxide is photodissociated by arrays of ultraviolet light-emitting diodes (UV-LEDs) is described. The source output was analyzed by gas chromatography and thermal dissociation cavity ring-down spectroscopy and modeled using the Master Chemical Mechanism.

We propose a user-friendly representation of remotely sensed vertical profiles of atmospheric constituents. The data are provided on a fixed pressure grid coarse enough to allow a virtually unconstrained retrieval. Thus the data user need not apply the averaging kernel. To avoid data interpolation, the grid is chosen to be a subset of the pressure grid often used in the modelling community. For representation, the profiles have been transformed to rectangular base functions.

Cloud absorption optical depths retrieved at 12.05 microns are compared to extinction optical depths retrieved at 0.532 microns from perfectly co-located observations of single-layered semi-transparent cirrus over oceans made by the space-borne CALIPSO IIR infrared radiometer and CALIOP lidar. A new relationship describing the temperature-dependent effect of multiple scattering in the CALIOP retrievals is derived and discussed.

We have explored the use of COSMIC radio occultation data to provide valuable scientific information on how energetic particles arriving from the Earth’s magnetosphere affect the ionosphere. These precipitating particles significantly alter the Earth’s ionospheric electron density in the E region at altitudes near 120km. This affects the ionospheric conductivity and hence the global electrodynamics and structure of the upper atmosphere during geomagnetic storms caused by the solar wind.

An automatic collector (CARAGA) has been developed to monitor insoluble atmospheric deposition in remote areas with a large autonomy. It is used to sample total (dry and wet) deposition on Frioul Island in the western Mediterranean Basin over which Saharan dust can be transported and deposited. To quantify the mineral dust mass in deposition samples, a weighing and ignition protocol is used. Two years of continuous deposition measurements performed on a weekly sampling basis are presented.

This paper discusses simulation results of a newly developed line-of-sight wind retrieval algorithm expanding an existing simulation framework that includes the retrieval of thermodynamic variables and greenhouse gases in the upper troposphere/lower stratosphere region. The underlying mission concept further develops the radio occultation technique (i.e. satellite remote sensing technique scanning the atmosphere with high vertical resolution) employing microwave and infrared-laser signals.

This study presents two methods for estimating methane emissions from a waste water treatment plant (WWTP) along with results from a measurement campaign at a WWTP in Valence, France. We show that the tracer release method is suitable to quantify facility emissions, while the chamber measurements, provide insights into individual processes. We confirm that the open basins are not a major source of CH4 on the WWTP but that the pretreatment and sludge treatment are the main emitters.

Here we present an experimental setup for water stable isotopes continuous flow measurements. It is the first continuous flow laser spectroscopy system that is using off-axis integrated cavity output spectroscopy (analyzer manufactured by LGR) in combination with an evaporation unit to continuously analyze sample from an ice core. The isotopic water analyzer setup used during the 2013 RICE ice core processing campaign achieved measurements with high precision and high temporal resolution.

We address mirroring, blurring, and background radiometric anomalies in the MISR standard Level 1 product empirically by comparing nadir-view near-infrared MISR with simultaneous MODIS images in high-contrast scenes. These anomalies affect aerosol optical depth and aerosol type results, especially over dark ocean scenes with broken cloud. We validate the corrections in all MISR channels by comparing multi-angle research retrievals with 1100 simultaneous surface sun photometer observations.

A novel configuration of the Aerodyne high resolution time-of-flight chemical ionization mass spectrometer (HR-TOF-CIMS) as a switchable reagent ion (SRI) HR-TOF-CIMS is presented and described along with data collected at the Southern Oxidant and Aerosol Study (SOAS) during the summer of 2013. Formic acid and other relevant species are presented, and they exhibit a strong diel cycle being rapidly produced during the day and dropping below the limit of detection at night.

Long-term data sets of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations based on observations from different satellite instruments may suffer from inconsistencies originating from the use of different retrieval algorithms. This issue has been addressed by applying the Bremen Optimal Estimation DOAS retrieval algorithm to SCIAMACHY and TANSO-FTS observations. Detailed comparisons with TCCON and CarbonTracker show good consistency between the SCIAMACHY and TANSO-FTS data sets.

The ozone multi-sensor reanalysis (MSR2) is a multi-decadal ozone column analysis for the period 1970-2012 based on all available ozone column satellite datasets, surface Brewer-Dobson observations and a data assimilation technique with detailed error modelling. The latest total ozone retrievals of 15 different satellite instruments are used: BUV-Nimbus4, TOMS-Nimbus7, TOMS-EP, SBUV-7, -9, -11, -14, -16, -17, -18, -19, GOME, SCIAMACHY, OMI and GOME-2.

We investigated the susceptibility of the Dobson spectrophotometer No. 118 to stray-light interference. The monochromatic-heterochromatic stray light derived by Basher’s model was used in order to evaluate the specific instrumental parameters which determine if this instrument suffers from this problem or not. The results obtained indicate that the Athens Dobson instrument appears to have an insignificant stray-light error.