The Origin of Tropospheric Air Masses and related transport processes infer from FTIR measurements and Model Simulations in Western Pacific Region and South America

The Western Pacific Region has some of the highest sea surface temperatures in the world, described as the Tropical Warm Pool (TWP). It plays a major role in the troposphere-stratosphere exchange and, the chemical composition in the TWP will greatly affect that in the Tropical Tropopause Layer (TTL) and therefore the stratosphere. The FTIR station in Koror, Palau (7.5°N, 134°E) is the only FTIR site in the Warm Pool, which was installed as part of the EU-project StratoClim in 2016. The FTIR station in Paramaribo, Suriname (5.8°N, 55°W) was established as part of the EU-program STAR in 2004. The measurement site in Burgos, Philippines (18.5°N, 120.65°E) (Velazco et al., 2017a) just beside the Warm Pool was installed in 2016. Our analysis of FTIR methane measurements at Palau from 11/2018 – 06/2021 and at Suriname from 01/2017 – 05/2021 with the GEOS-Chem model simulations give some insights into transport processes and the origin of air mass in the TWP. The NDACC retrieved CH₄ has good sensitivity to the troposphere and stratosphere. Tropospheric and stratospheric X_CH4 are analyzed separately based on the FTIR measurements. Simulations of CH₄ from the GEOS-Chem model are used to be compared with the measurements from two tropical sites. The position of the Chemical Equator (Hamilton et al., 2008) calculated from the GEOS-Chem model simulations and FLEXPART are used to investigate the seasonal variations of the CH₄ measurements from FTIR.