Observed NO/NO2 Ratios in the Upper Troposphere Imply Errors in NO-NO2-O-3 Cycling Kinetics or an Unaccounted NOx Reservoir Geophysical Research Letters

Observations from the SEAC(4)RS aircraft campaign over the southeast United States in August-September 2013 show NO/NO2 concentration ratios in the upper troposphere that are approximately half of photochemical equilibrium values computed from Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) kinetic data. One possible explanation is the presence of labile NOx reservoir species, presumably organic, decomposing thermally to NO2 in the instrument. The NO2 instrument corrects for this artifact from known labile HNO4 and CH3O2NO2 NOx reservoirs. To bridge the gap between measured and simulated NO2, additional unaccounted labile NOx reservoir species would have to be present at a mean concentration of similar to 40 ppt for the SEAC(4)RS conditions (compared with 197ppt for NOx). An alternative explanation is error in the low-temperature rate constant for the NO+O-3 reaction (30% 1-sigma uncertainty in JPL at 240 K) and/or in the spectroscopic data for NO2 photolysis (20% 1-sigma uncertainty). Resolving this discrepancy is important for understanding global budgets of tropospheric oxidants and for interpreting satellite observations of tropospheric NO2 columns.