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Atmospheric chemistry

Bromine explosion

Nature volume 397, pages 299–301 (1999)Cite this article

Bromine free radicals are emerging as important players in the photochemistry of the lower atmosphere, at least on local scales. Earlier this month, Hebestreit et al.1 described the discovery of air laden with bromine monoxide (BrO) wafting off the salt pans near the Dead Sea. And on page 338 of this issue2, McElroy and colleagues report observations of BrO, obtained by remote measurements in the Arctic, that suggest bromine is present between the tropopause (at about 8 km height) and the top of the planetary boundary layer (~1 km). The planetary boundary layer is unlike the free troposphere that lies above it because the turbulence mixing timescale is very fast, and so exchange of gases with the surface occurs quickly (less than 1 day).

The data concerned come from April 1997, when a spectrometer on NASA's ER-2 high-altitude aircraft recorded the presence of tropospheric BrO by its effect on sunlight reflected off the ice below — so much BrO, argue McElroy et al., that it must be present throughout the troposphere. The surprise here is that although bromine is known to figure in the marine boundary layer at high latitudes during springtime, and in the stratosphere throughout the year, there has been very limited evidence for BrO in the free troposphere (see for example ref. 3).

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Figure 1: Flying high over the Beaufort Sea (see map on page 339), a spectrometer on NASA's ER-2 aircraft r.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Geological and Planetary Science, and the Department of Environmental Engineering Science, MS 150-21

    Paul Wennberg

  2. California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, 91125, California, USA

    Paul Wennberg

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Wennberg, P. Bromine explosion. Nature 397, 299–301 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/16805

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