Global Seasonal Distributions of HCN and Acetonitrile

NASA’s Earth Venture suborbital (EVS-2) Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) dataset provides a unique opportunity to investigate the global distributions of the biomass burning (BB) tracers HCN and CH₃CN during four different seasons spanning from 2016 through 2018. We will use the NCAR Trace Organic Gas Analyzer (TOGA) CH₃CN and HCN measurements and the California Institute of Technology chemical ionization mass spectrometer (CIMS) HCN measurements together with CO measurements from the NOAA Picarro and the Harvard QCLS to categorize the seasonal latitudinal and longitudinal distributions of these important BB tracers. We will compare the measurements to the Community Atmosphere Model with Chemistry (CAM-chem) global model using Fire INventory from NCAR (FINN) and Quick Fire Emissions Dataset (QFED) BB emissions. We will also examine the distributions of these fairly non-reactive species into the lower stratosphere.