Detection of biomass burning combustion products in Southeast Asia from backscatter data taken by the GOME Spectrometer

We show that atmospheric UV/visible backscatter spectra obtained by the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME) spectrometer on board the ESA ERS‐2 satellite may be used to retrieve column amounts of key trace species associated with smoke cloud combustion from biomass burning events. This paper focuses on the recent rain forest burning in SE Asia (August–October 1997). For ground scenes with low cloudiness, differential absorption fitting applied to backscatter spectra yields column distributions of NO 2 and H 2 CO in and around smoke‐polluted regions. A two‐fold increase in the vertical NO 2 content is apparent over large parts of the smoke cloud; this clearly indicates the ability of GOME to measure tropospheric NO 2 content. H 2 CO is detected only in areas closest to combustion sources. Slant column amounts in the range 2.5 ‐ 4 × 10 16 mol cm −2 have been determined; these correspond with previous estimations of vertical columns of H 2 CO for biomass Savannah burning.