Measurements of atmospheric ethene by solar absorption FTIR spectrometry

Atmospheric ethene (C₂H₄; ethylene) amounts have been retrieved from high-resolution solar absorption spectra measured by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) MkIV interferometer. Data recorded from 1985 to 2016 from a dozen ground-based sites have been analyzed, mostly between 30 and 67° N. At clean-air sites such as Alaska, Sweden, New Mexico, or the mountains of California, the ethene columns were always less than 1 × 10¹⁵ molec cm⁻² and therefore undetectable. In urban sites such as JPL, California, ethene was measurable with column amounts of 20 × 10¹⁵ molec cm⁻² observed in the 1990s. Despite the increasing population and traffic in southern California, a factor 3 decrease in ethene column density is observed over JPL over the past 25 years, accompanied by a decrease in CO. This is likely due to southern California's increasingly stringent vehicle exhaust regulations and tighter enforcement over this period.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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