Analysis of Tropospheric Carbon Monoxide using MOPITT data

The Measurement of Pollution in the Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument is an eight-channel gas correlation radiometer launched on the Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra spacecraft in 1999. Its main objectives are to measure carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH4) concentrations in the troposphere. This work analyzes tropospheric carbon monoxide distributions using MOPITT data in East Asia and compared ozone distributions. In general, seasonal CO variations are characterized by a spring peak and decreased in the summer. Also, this work revealed that the seasonal cycles of CO are spring maximum and summer minimum with averaged concentrations ranging from 118ppbv to 170ppbv. The CO monthly means show a similar profiles to those of O3. This fact clearly indicates that the high concentration of CO in spring is caused by two possible causes: the photochemical CO production in the troposphere, transport of the CO in the northeast Asia. The CO and O3 seasonal cycles in northeast Asia are influenced extensively by the seasonal exchange of the different types of air mass due to the Asian monsoon. The continental air masses contain high concentrations of O3 and CO due to higher continental background concentrations and sometimes due to the contribution of regional pollution. In summer the transport pattern is reversed. The Pacific marine air masses prevail over Korea, so that the marine air masses bring low concentrations of CO and O3, which tend to give the apparent minimum in summer.