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Secondary Organic Aerosol Formation from Anthropogenic Air Pollution: Rapid and Higher than Expected

TLDR
This paper showed that reactive anthropogenic VOCs (AVOCs) produce much larger amounts of SOA than these models predict, even shortly after sunrise, and a significant fraction of the excess SOA is formed from first-generation AVOC oxidation products.
Abstract
[1] The atmospheric chemistry of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in urban areas results in the formation of ‘photochemical smog’, including secondary organic aerosol (SOA). State-of-the-art SOA models parameterize the results of simulation chamber experiments that bracket the conditions found in the polluted urban atmosphere. Here we show that in the real urban atmosphere reactive anthropogenic VOCs (AVOCs) produce much larger amounts of SOA than these models predict, even shortly after sunrise. Contrary to current belief, a significant fraction of the excess SOA is formed from first-generation AVOC oxidation products. Global models deem AVOCs a very minor contributor to SOA compared to biogenic VOCs (BVOCs). If our results are extrapolated to other urban areas, AVOCs could be responsible for additional 3–25 Tg yr−1 SOA production globally, and cause up to −0.1 W m−2 additional top-of-the-atmosphere radiative cooling.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Evolution of Organic Aerosols in the Atmosphere

Jose L. Jimenez, +66 more
- 11 Dec 2009 - 
TL;DR: A unifying model framework describing the atmospheric evolution of OA that is constrained by high–time-resolution measurements of its composition, volatility, and oxidation state is presented, which can serve as a basis for improving parameterizations in regional and global models.
Journal ArticleDOI

Chemistry of secondary organic aerosol: Formation and evolution of low-volatility organics in the atmosphere

TL;DR: A review of the chemistry of the formation and continuing transformation of low-volatility species in the atmosphere can be found in this article, where the primary focus is chemical processes that can change the volatility of organic compounds: oxidation reactions in the gas phase, reaction in the particle phase, and reaction in either phase over several generations.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Aerosols, climate, and the hydrological cycle

TL;DR: Human activities are releasing tiny particles (aerosols) into the atmosphere that enhance scattering and absorption of solar radiation, which can lead to a weaker hydrological cycle, which connects directly to availability and quality of fresh water, a major environmental issue of the 21st century.
Journal ArticleDOI

Evolution of Organic Aerosols in the Atmosphere

Jose L. Jimenez, +66 more
- 11 Dec 2009 - 
TL;DR: A unifying model framework describing the atmospheric evolution of OA that is constrained by high–time-resolution measurements of its composition, volatility, and oxidation state is presented, which can serve as a basis for improving parameterizations in regional and global models.
Journal ArticleDOI

Organic aerosol and global climate modelling: a review

TL;DR: In this article, the authors reviewed existing knowledge with regard to organic aerosol (OA) of importance for global climate modelling and defined critical gaps needed to reduce the involved uncertainties, and synthesized the information to provide a continuous analysis of the flow from the emitted material to the atmosphere up to the point of the climate impact of the produced organic aerosols.
Journal ArticleDOI

Rethinking Organic Aerosols: Semivolatile Emissions and Photochemical Aging

TL;DR: Accounting for partitioning and photochemical processing of primary emissions creates a more regionally distributed aerosol and brings model predictions into better agreement with observations, attribute this unexplained secondary organic-aerosol production to the oxidation of low-volatility gas-phase species.