Contribution of Asian emissions to upper tropospheric CO over the remote Pacific

2021

Abstract. Upon analysing the global distribution of the highest 2 % of daily CO mixing ratios at 400 hPa derived from the MOPITT satellite instrument for 20 years (2000–2019), we very regularly detect regions with very high CO values (i.e. mixing ratios belonging to the globally highest 2 %) over the remote Northern Hemispheric (NH) Pacific. Such events of elevated CO over the upper tropospheric NH Pacific occur throughout the year with surprisingly high regularity and frequency (70 % of all days during winter, 80 % of all days during spring). During winter, most of these pollution events are detected over the north-eastern and central NH Pacific, during spring over the central NH Pacific, …