Comprehensive characterization of atmospheric organic carbon at a forested site
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Kroll_Comprehensive characterization of atmospheric organic carbon at a forested site.pdf
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Author(s)
Day, Douglas A.
Palm, Brett B.
Yatavelli, Reddy L. N.
Chan, Arthur W. H.
Kaser, Lisa
Cappellin, Luca
Hayes, Patrick L.
Cross, Eben S.
Campuzano-Jost, Pedro
Stark, Harald
Date Issued
September 2017
Journal
Nature Geoscience
Citation
Hunter, James F. et al. “Comprehensive Characterization of Atmospheric Organic Carbon at a Forested Site.” Nature Geoscience 10, 10 (September 2017): 748–753
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Atmospheric organic compounds are central to key chemical processes that influence air quality, ecological health, and climate. However, longstanding difficulties in predicting important quantities such as organic aerosol formation and oxidant lifetimes indicate that our understanding of atmospheric organic chemistry is fundamentally incomplete, probably due in part to the presence of organic species that are unmeasured using standard analytical techniques. Here we present measurements of a wide range of atmospheric organic compounds—including previously unmeasured species—taken concurrently at a single site (a ponderosa pine forest during summertime) by five state-of-the-art mass spectrometric instruments. The combined data set provides a comprehensive characterization of atmospheric organic carbon, covering a wide range in chemical properties (volatility, oxidation state, and molecular size), and exhibiting no obvious measurement gaps. This enables the first construction of a measurement-based local organic budget, highlighting the high emission, deposition, and oxidation fluxes in this environment. Moreover, previously unmeasured species, including semivolatile and intermediate-volatility organic species (S/IVOCs), account for one-third of the total organic carbon, and (within error) provide closure on both OH reactivity and potential secondary organic aerosol formation.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/NGEO3018
