AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Modeling the Chemistry and Growth of Organic Aerosol in Biomass Burning Plumes at Local and Regional Scales
CHANTELLE LONSDALE, Matthew Alvarado, Robert J. Yokelson, Katherine Travis, Sheryl K. Akagi, Donald Blake, Ian Burling, Hugh Coe, Emily Fischer, David Griffith, Timothy Johnson, Sonia Kreidenweis, Taehyoung Lee, Andrew May, Gavin McMeeking, Simone Meinardi, Isobel Simpson, Amy P. Sullivan, Jonathan Taylor, Shawn P. Urbanski, David R. Weise, Cyle Wold, AER
Abstract Number: 183 Working Group: Aerosol Chemistry
Abstract Biomass burning is a major source of atmospheric trace gases and particles that impact regional air quality. Within minutes after emission, complex photochemistry in smoke plumes can cause large changes in the concentration, size distribution, composition, and optical properties of fine particles (PM2.5). Being able to understand and simulate this rapid evolution under a wide variety of conditions is thus a critical part of modeling or forecasting the impact of these fires on local and regional air quality. The Aerosol Simulation Program (ASP) has been previously used within a Lagrangian parcel model to simulate the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) and ozone within several African and North American plumes, including an in-depth study of a biomass smoke plume sampled over California. Here we will present ASP simulations of South Carolina prescribed fires sampled in October and November of 2011. This experiment provided more detailed measurements of the non-methane organic compounds (NMOCs) in the smoke plume, allowing for more detailed evaluation of the interactions between the gas- and particle-phase chemistry. Additionally, we will discuss our work using the ASP model’s sub-grid scale parameterization of the near-source chemistry of biomass burning plumes for use in regional and global air quality models, with examples using GEOS-Chem. Finally we will present preliminary work on the implementation of ASP into a stochastic Lagrangian air quality model, STILT-Chem.