AAAR 35th Annual Conference October 17 - October 21, 2016 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
How the Characterization and Model Representation of Biomass Burning Emissions Affect SOA Predictions
KELLEY BARSANTI, Lindsay Hatch, Brian K. Lamb, Christine Wiedinmyer, Robert J. Yokelson, Serena H. Chung, University of California, Riverside
Abstract Number: 398 Working Group: Carbonaceous Aerosols in the Atmosphere
Abstract Biomass burning (BB) is the second largest global emissions source of non-methane organic compounds (NMOCs), and thus potentially a significant source of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) on local to global scales. Until recently, a large mass fraction of NMOCs in BB emissions (up to 80%) has remained uncharacterized or unidentified. Models used to simulate the air quality and climate impacts of BB thus have relied on very limited chemical characterization of the emitted compounds. Recent application of advanced analytical techniques have enabled identification and quantification of an unprecedented fraction of BB NMOCs, including previously unspeciated intermediate volatility organic compounds (IVOCs). In this work, BB emissions profiles have been updated using these recent data; the sensitivity of predicted SOA mass concentrations to differences in emission speciation profiles have been evaluated using box model (0-D) and chemical transport model (3-D) simulations. The updated BB emissions speciation profiles lead to markedly different surrogate compound distributions than the default speciation profiles. The resultant effects on predicted SOA mass concentrations, and the implications of using traditional approaches for mapping individual compounds to mechanism species, will be presented.