Impacts of Traffic Reductions Associated With COVID-19 on Southern California Air Quality.

On 19 March 2020, California put in place Stay-At-Home orders to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2. As a result, decreases up to 50% in traffic occurred across the South Coast Air Basin (SoCAB). We report that, compared to the 19 March to 30 June period of the last 5 years, the 2020 concentrations of PM2.5 and NO x showed an overall reduction across the basin. O3 concentrations decreased in the western part of the basin and generally increased in the downwind areas. The NO x decline in 2020 (approximately 27% basin-wide) is in addition to ongoing declines over the last two decades (on average 4% less than the -6.8% per year afternoon NO2 concentration decrease) and provides insight into how air quality may respond over the next few years of continued vehicular reductions. The modest changes in O3 suggests additional mitigation will be necessary to comply with air quality standards.

Ozone production chemistry in the presence of urban plumes.

Ozone pollution affects human health, especially in urban areas on hot sunny days. Its basic photochemistry has been known for decades and yet it is still not possible to correctly predict the high ozone levels that are the greatest threat. The CalNex_SJV study in Bakersfield CA in May/June 2010 provided an opportunity to examine ozone photochemistry in an urban area surrounded by agriculture. The measurement suite included hydroxyl (OH), hydroperoxyl (HO2), and OH reactivity, which are compared with the output of a photochemical box model. While the agreement is generally within combined uncertainties, measured HO2 far exceeds modeled HO2 in NOx-rich plumes. OH production and loss do not balance as they should in the morning, and the ozone production calculated with measured HO2 is a decade greater than that calculated with modeled HO2 when NO levels are high. Calculated ozone production using measured HO2 is twice that using modeled HO2, but this difference in calculated ozone production has minimal impact on the assessment of NOx-sensitivity or VOC-sensitivity for midday ozone production. Evidence from this study indicates that this important discrepancy is not due to the HO2 measurement or to the sampling of transported plumes but instead to either emissions of unknown organic species that accompany the NO emissions or unknown photochemistry involving nitrogen oxides and hydrogen oxides, possibly the hypothesized reaction OH + NO + O2 → HO2 + NO2.

Contribution of isoprene-derived organosulfates to free tropospheric aerosol mass.

Recent laboratory studies have demonstrated that isoprene oxidation products can partition to atmospheric aerosols by reacting with condensed phase sulfuric acid, forming low-volatility organosulfate compounds. We have identified organosulfate compounds in free tropospheric aerosols by single particle mass spectrometry during several airborne field campaigns. One of these organosulfates is identified as the sulfate ester of IEPOX, a second generation oxidation product of isoprene. The patterns of IEPOX sulfate ester in ambient data generally followed the aerosol acidity and NO(x) dependence established by laboratory studies. Detection of the IEPOX sulfate ester was most sensitive using reduced ionization laser power, when it was observed in up to 80% of particles in the tropical free troposphere. Based on laboratory mass calibrations, IEPOX added > 0.4% to tropospheric aerosol mass in the remote tropics and up to 20% in regions downwind of isoprene sources. In the southeastern United States, when acidic aerosol was exposed to fresh isoprene emissions, accumulation of IEPOX increased aerosol mass by up to 3%. The IEPOX sulfate ester is therefore one of the most abundant single organic compounds measured in atmospheric aerosol. Our data show that acidity-dependent IEPOX uptake is a mechanism by which anthropogenic SO(2) and marine dimethyl sulfide emissions generate secondary biogenic aerosol mass throughout the troposphere.

Chemical composition of gas- and aerosol-phase products from the photooxidation of naphthalene.

The current work focuses on the detailed evolution of the chemical composition of both the gas- and aerosol-phase constituents produced from the OH-initiated photooxidation of naphthalene under low- and high-NO(x) conditions. Under high-NO(x) conditions ring-opening products are the primary gas-phase products, suggesting that the mechanism involves dissociation of alkoxy radicals (RO) formed through an RO(2) + NO pathway, or a bicyclic peroxy mechanism. In contrast to the high-NO(x) chemistry, ring-retaining compounds appear to dominate the low-NO(x) gas-phase products owing to the RO(2) + HO(2) pathway. We are able to chemically characterize 53-68% of the secondary organic aerosol (SOA) mass. Atomic oxygen-to-carbon (O/C), hydrogen-to-carbon (H/C), and nitrogen-to-carbon (N/C) ratios measured in bulk samples by high-resolution electrospray ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HR-ESI-TOFMS) are the same as the ratios observed with online high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometry (HR-ToF-AMS), suggesting that the chemical compositions and oxidation levels found in the chemically-characterized fraction of the particle phase are representative of the bulk aerosol. Oligomers, organosulfates (R-OSO(3)), and other high-molecular-weight (MW) products are not observed in either the low- or high-NO(x) SOA; however, in the presence of neutral ammonium sulfate seed aerosol, an organic sulfonic acid (R-SO(3)), characterized as hydroxybenzene sulfonic acid, is observed in naphthalene SOA produced under both high- and low-NO(x) conditions. Acidic compounds and organic peroxides are found to account for a large fraction of the chemically characterized high- and low-NO(x) SOA. We propose that the major gas- and aerosol-phase products observed are generated through the formation and further reaction of 2-formylcinnamaldehyde or a bicyclic peroxy intermediate. The chemical similarity between the laboratory SOA and ambient aerosol collected from Birmingham, Alabama (AL) and Pasadena, California (CA) confirm the importance of PAH oxidation in the formation of aerosol within the urban atmosphere.

Removal of Stratospheric O3 by Radicals: In Situ Measurements of OH, HO2, NO, NO2, ClO, and BrO.

Simultaneous in situ measurements of the concentrations of OH, HO(2), ClO, BrO, NO, and NO(2) demonstrate the predominance of odd-hydrogen and halogen free-radical catalysis in determining the rate of removal of ozone in the lower stratosphere during May 1993. A single catalytic cycle, in which the rate-limiting step is the reaction of HO(2) with ozone, accounted for nearly one-half of the total O(3) removal in this region of the atmosphere. Halogen-radical chemistry was responsible for approximately one-third of the photochemical removal of O(3); reactions involving BrO account for one-half of this loss. Catalytic destruction by NO(2), which for two decades was considered to be the predominant loss process, accounted for less than 20 percent of the O(3) removal. The measurements demonstrate quantitatively the coupling that exists between the radical families. The concentrations of HO(2) and ClO are inversely correlated with those of NO and NO(2). The direct determination of the relative importance of the catalytic loss processes, combined with a demonstration of the reactions linking the hydrogen, halogen, and nitrogen radical concentrations, shows that in the air sampled the rate of O(3) removal was inversely correlated with total NOx, loading.

The detection of large HNO3-containing particles in the winter Arctic stratosphere.

Large particles containing nitric acid (HNO3) were observed in the 1999/2000 Arctic winter stratosphere. These in situ observations were made over a large altitude range (16 to 21 kilometers) and horizontal extent (1800 kilometers) on several airborne sampling flights during a period of several weeks. With diameters of 10 to 20 micrometers, these sedimenting particles have significant potential to denitrify the lower stratosphere. A microphysical model of nitric acid trihydrate particles is able to simulate the growth and sedimentation of these large sizes in the lower stratosphere, but the nucleation process is not yet known. Accurate modeling of the formation of these large particles is essential for understanding Arctic denitrification and predicting future Arctic ozone abundances.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 early science investigations of regional carbon dioxide fluxes.

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) mission was motivated by the need to diagnose how the increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is altering the productivity of the biosphere and the uptake of CO2 by the oceans. Launched on 2 July 2014, OCO-2 provides retrievals of the column-averaged CO2 dry-air mole fraction ([Formula: see text]) as well as the fluorescence from chlorophyll in terrestrial plants. The seasonal pattern of uptake by the terrestrial biosphere is recorded in fluorescence and the drawdown of [Formula: see text] during summer. Launched just before one of the most intense El Niños of the past century, OCO-2 measurements of [Formula: see text] and fluorescence record the impact of the large change in ocean temperature and rainfall on uptake and release of CO2 by the oceans and biosphere.

Organic nitrate chemistry and its implications for nitrogen budgets in an isoprene- and monoterpene-rich atmosphere: constraints from aircraft (SEAC4RS) and ground-based (SOAS) observations in the Southeast US.

Formation of organic nitrates (RONO2) during oxidation of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs: isoprene, monoterpenes) is a significant loss pathway for atmospheric nitrogen oxide radicals (NOx), but the chemistry of RONO2 formation and degradation remains uncertain. Here we implement a new BVOC oxidation mechanism (including updated isoprene chemistry, new monoterpene chemistry, and particle uptake of RONO2) in the GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model with ∼25 × 25 km2 resolution over North America. We evaluate the model using aircraft (SEAC4RS) and ground-based (SOAS) observations of NOx, BVOCs, and RONO2 from the Southeast US in summer 2013. The updated simulation successfully reproduces the concentrations of individual gas- and particle-phase RONO2 species measured during the campaigns. Gas-phase isoprene nitrates account for 25-50% of observed RONO2 in surface air, and we find that another 10% is contributed by gas-phase monoterpene nitrates. Observations in the free troposphere show an important contribution from long-lived nitrates derived from anthropogenic VOCs. During both campaigns, at least 10% of observed boundary layer RONO2 were in the particle phase. We find that aerosol uptake followed by hydrolysis to HNO3 accounts for 60% of simulated gas-phase RONO2 loss in the boundary layer. Other losses are 20% by photolysis to recycle NOx and 15% by dry deposition. RONO2 production accounts for 20% of the net regional NOx sink in the Southeast US in summer, limited by the spatial segregation between BVOC and NOx emissions. This segregation implies that RONO2 production will remain a minor sink for NOx in the Southeast US in the future even as NOx emissions continue to decline.

Importance of secondary sources in the atmospheric budgets of formic and acetic acids.

We present a detailed budget of formic and acetic acids, two of the most abundant trace gases in the atmosphere. Our bottom-up estimate of the global source of formic and acetic acids are ∼1200 and ∼1400Gmolyr-1, dominated by photochemical oxidation of biogenic volatile organic compounds, in particular isoprene. Their sinks are dominated by wet and dry deposition. We use the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model to evaluate this budget against an extensive suite of measurements from ground, ship and satellite-based Fourier transform spectrometers, as well as from several aircraft campaigns over North America. The model captures the seasonality of formic and acetic acids well but generally underestimates their concentration, particularly in the Northern midlatitudes. We infer that the source of both carboxylic acids may be up to 50% greater than our estimate and report evidence for a long-lived missing secondary source of carboxylic acids that may be associated with the aging of organic aerosols. Vertical profiles of formic acid in the upper troposphere support a negative temperature dependence of the reaction between formic acid and the hydroxyl radical as suggested by several theoretical studies.