Systematics of Reactive Nitrogen, Ozone, and Tracer Distributions throughout the Remote Pacific and Atlantic Troposphere from the NASA Atmospheric Tomography Mission

The Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) Mission is a 5-year NASA Earth Venture airborne field mission to quantify processing and loss rates for the short-lived climate forcing agents ozone (O₃), methane (CH₄) and black carbon (BC) aerosol in oceanic air masses representing 60% of the global atmosphere. To date, ATom has acquired global-scale in situ gas and aerosol data by near-continuous airborne vertical profiling along latitudinal transects in the Northern and Southern Pacific and Atlantic marine boundary layer, troposphere, and lower stratosphere during 2 of the 4 deployments planned between 2016 and 2018.

In-situ atmospheric data taken during the 2 recently-completed boreal summer and winter ATom deployments provide a uniquely detailed characterization of the atmospheric chemical state. This analysis uses ATom data to develop observationally-based, systematic representations of the remote atmosphere to facilitate comparison to global-scale chemistry-transport and chemistry-climate models. Here we present vertical and latitudinal distribution of key reactive and tracer species in the remote atmosphere, compare summer and winter distributions in the Pacific and Atlantic basins, and identify distinct modes in the probability distributions to provide new constraints on global model simulations.