Investigation of Secondary Organic Aerosol and Black Carbon Aging during the 2010 Carbonaceous Aerosol and Radiative Effects Study (CARES)
EMSL Project ID
38892
Abstract
Carbonaceous aerosols play a major role in the direct and indirect radiative forcing of climate. However, several mechanistic uncertainties and knowledge gaps still exist in our understanding of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation and black carbon (BC) aging. These issues must be systematically addressed with an integrated laboratory and field study program using comprehensive aerosol data at microscopic and molecular levels. Several EMSL instruments are currently being used in our ongoing laboratory studies at PNNL on SOA formation. In this project, a suite of EMSL instruments (and expertise) are requested for deployment during the DOE Carbonaceous Aerosol and Radiative Effects Study (CARES) in summer 2010 to investigate heterogeneous chemical mechanisms of SOA formation and black carbon aging (aerosol mixing state evolution) in central California. The investigation of SOA will focus on the formation of sp2 hybridized C=C bonds via aldol condensation of carbonyl-containing species to yield 'humic-like' polyconjugated oligomeric compounds, which are known to correlate with the increased absorption spectral selectivity of aerosol. A PTR-MS, high-resolution AMS, and ultrahigh-resolution Orbitrap mass spectrometer at EMSL will be used to measure selected precursors and detailed aerosol composition. A suite of state-of-the-art aerosol optical properties measurements will be provided by DOE ARM Climate Research Facility (ACRF). Investigation of BC aging will focus on the evolution of aerosol mixing state and their optical and CCN activation properties as a function of photochemical processing. Aerosol size, mixing state, morphology, and density will be measured with EMSL's single-particle mass spectrometer SPLAT II. The requested EMSL instruments have already been approved under another EMSL proposal. In this proposal we are specifically requesting support for EMSL staff to obtain the detailed microscopic and molecular level aerosol and precursor gas data to test our hypotheses on SOA formation and BC aging.
Project Details
Project type
Exploratory Research
Start Date
2010-03-08
End Date
2011-03-13
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members
Related Publications
Zaveri RA, WJ Shaw, DJ Cziczo, B Schmid, R Ferrare, ML Alexander, M Alexandrov, RJ Alvarez, WP Arnott, D Atkinson, S Baidar, RM Banta, JC Barnard, J Beranek, LK Berg, FJ Brechtel, WA Brewer, JF Cahill, B Cairns, CD Cappa, D Chand, S China, JM Comstock, MK Dubey, RC Easter, Jr, MH Erickson, JD Fast, C Floerchinger, BA Flowers, E Fortner, JS Gaffney, MK Gilles, K Gorkowski, WI Gustafson, Jr, MS Gyawali, J Hair, M Hardesty, JW Harworth, SC Herndon, N Hiranuma, CA Hostetler, JM Hubbe, JT Jayne, H Jeong, BT Jobson, EI Kassianov, LI Kleinman, CD Kluzek, B Knighton, KR Kolesar, C Kuang, A Kubatova, AO Langford, A Laskin, NS Laulainen, RD Marchbanks, C Mazzoleni, F Mei, RC Moffet, DA Nelson, M Obland, H Oetjen, TB Onasch, I Ortega, M Ottaviani, MS Pekour, KA Prather, JG Radney, R Rogers, SP Sandberg, A Sedlacek, C Senff, G Senum, A Setyan, JE Shilling, MKB Shrivastava, C Song, SR Springston, R Subramanian, K Suski, JM Tomlinson, RM Volkamer, HA Wallace, J Wang, AM Weickmann, DR Worsnop, XY Yu, A Zelenyuk, and Q Zhang. 2012. "Overview of the 2010 Carbonaceous Aerosols and Radiative Effects Study (CARES)." Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 12(16):7647-7687. doi:10.5194/acp-12-7647-2012