A systematic comparison of ACE-FTS δD retrievals with airborne in situ sampling

Abstract

The isotopic composition of water vapor in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) can be used to understand and constrain the budget and pathways of water transport into that region of the atmosphere. Measurements of the water isotopic composition help further understanding of the region’s chemistry, radiative budget, and the sublimation and growth of polar stratospheric clouds and high-altitude cirrus, both of which are also important to stratospheric chemistry and Earth’s radiation budget. Here we present the first intercomparison of water isotopic composition (δD) using in situ measurements from the ChiWIS, Harvard ICOS, and Hoxotope instruments and satellite retrievals from ACE-FTS. The in situ data come from the AVE-WIIF, TC4, CR-AVE, StratoClim, and ACCLIP field campaigns, and satellite retrievals of isotopic composition are derived from the ACE-FTS v5.2 data set. We find that in all campaign intervals, satellite retrievals above about 14 km altitude are depleted by up to 150 ‰ with respect to in situ measurements. This difference persists even in transit flights through stratospheric air in high-latitude regions, which should be relatively free of observational biases present in other regions. We also use in situ measurements from the ChiWIS instrument, which has flown in both the Asian Summer Monsoon (AM) and the North American Monsoon (NAM), to confirm the isotopic enhancement in δD observed in satellite retrievals above the NAM.