Satellite observations and modelling of hydrogen cyanide in the Earth's atmosphere

Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is one of the most abundant cyanidespresent in the global atmosphere, and is a tracer of biomass burning, especially forpeatland wildfires. In this work we present observations of HCN during the 2015Indonesian peatland fires from the IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interfer-ometer) satellite instrument. We also investigate HCN variability using an updatedversion of the TOMCAT three-dimensional (3-D) chemical transport model (CTM),which is evaluated using HCN profiles measured by the Atmospheric ChemistryExperiment Fourier Transform Spectrometer (ACE-FTS) and FTIR ground-basedinstruments in the NDACC (Network for the Detection of Atmospheric CompositionChange) network. Here, we compare model simulations with the IASI measurements over Indonesia

Automated summary

This study presents observations of HCN during the 2015 Indonesian peatland fires using the IASI satellite instrument, and investigates HCN variability using a updated version of the TOMCAT CTM.