Contribution of particulate nitrate to airborne measurements of total reactive nitrogen

[1] Simultaneous measurements of speciated, total reactive nitrogen (NOy) and particulate NO3 (particle diameter <1.3 mm) were made on board the NASA P-3B aircraft over the western Pacific in February–April 2001 during the Transport and Chemical Evolution over the Pacific (TRACE-P) experiment. Gas-phase and particulate NOy was measured using a gold tube catalytic converter. For the interpretation of particulate NOy, conversion efficiencies of particulate NH4NO3, KNO3, NaNO3, and Ca(NO3)2 were measured in the laboratory. Only NH4NO3 showed quantitative conversion, and its conversion efficiency was as high as that for HNO3. NOy measured on board the aircraft was found to be systematically higher by 10–30% than the sum of the individual NOy gas components ( P (NOy)i) at 0–4 km. Particulate NO3 concentrations measured by a particle-into-liquid sampler (PILS) were nearly equal to NOy P (NOy)i under low-dust-loading conditions. The PILS data showed that the majority of the particulate NO3 was in the form of NH4NO3 under these conditions, suggesting that NH4NO3 particles were quantitatively converted to detectable NO by the NOy converter, consistent with the laboratory experiments. The contribution of particulate NO3 to NOy was most important at 0–2 km, where NO3 constituted 10–30% of NOy during TRACE-P. On average, the amounts of particulate NO3 and gas-phase HNO3 were comparable in this region.