EGU2020-16783, updated on 16 Jan 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-16783
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

A novel spectroscopic approach for detection of chlorine reservoir species: HCl-TILDAS

John Halfacre1, Pete Edwards1, Scott Herndon2, Joseph Roscioli2, Christoph Dyroff2, Tara Yacovitch2, Nicholas Marsden3, Thomas Bannan3, Carl Percival3,4, Hugh Coe3, Patrick Veres5, and Steven Brown5
John Halfacre et al.
  • 1University of York, Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, Department of Chemistry, York, United Kingdom
  • 2Aerodyne Research Inc, Billerica, MA, United States of America
  • 3University of Manchester, School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, Manchester, United Kingdom
  • 4Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States of America
  • 5Earth System Research Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO, United States of America

Atomic chlorine radicals are known to affect atmospheric oxidation and pollutant lifetimes, but are challenging to detect due to their low ambient concentrations.  A lack of field observations limits useful assessments of the impacts of tropospheric chlorine oxidation on important atmospheric processes, such as regional ozone production, reactive nitrogen loss, and global methane removal.  In the last decade, instrumental innovations have enabled detection and speciation of much more stable chlorine atom reservoir species, such as nitryl chloride, through techniques such as cavity ring down spectroscopy and mass spectrometry.  HCl is the most abundant and long-lived tropospheric chlorine reservoir species, yet few observations exist.  Here, we present a specific method for detection of HCl via Tunable Laser Infrared Direct Absorption Spectrometer (TILDAS), which has been further extended for the detection of nitryl chloride.  This analytical method has several advantages over current observational techniques (e.g. chemical ionisation mass spectrometry), and will provide a much needed constraint on the tropospheric chlorine atom budget.

How to cite: Halfacre, J., Edwards, P., Herndon, S., Roscioli, J., Dyroff, C., Yacovitch, T., Marsden, N., Bannan, T., Percival, C., Coe, H., Veres, P., and Brown, S.: A novel spectroscopic approach for detection of chlorine reservoir species: HCl-TILDAS, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-16783, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-16783, 2020.

Displays

Display file