Evaluating the Composition and Photochemistry of Boreal Biomass Burning Smoke Plumes Using TES

We use the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) to determine the concentrations of the trace gases CO, O3, NH3, and formic acid (HCOOH) within boreal biomass burning plumes. We focus on 22 plumes observed by TES between June 15 and July 15, 2008 as part of the summer Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS-B) campaign. Only four of these plumes show evidence of enhanced ozone, and even in these cases the enhanced ozone may be due to intrusions of stratospheric air. We use TES retrievals of NH3 and HCOOH within the smoke plumes to calculate their enhancement ratios relative to CO. Our preliminary analysis suggests TES can observe PAN within boreal biomass burning plumes, but further work is needed to test the robustness of this result. We find that TES is unlikely to be able to detect HCN within most smoke