Articles | Volume 23, issue 21
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-13685-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-13685-2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Understanding offshore high-ozone events during TRACER-AQ 2021 in Houston: insights from WRF–CAMx photochemical modeling
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
Xueying Liu
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
Ehsan Soleimanian
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
Travis Griggs
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
James Flynn
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
Paul Walter
Department of Mathematics, St. Edward's University, Austin, TX, USA
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Isoprene, which is emitted from the vegetation, is important to regional air quality. Drought is one of the most important meteorological events that can modulate isoprene emissions by high temperature and low soil moisture. The drought stress impact on isoprene emissions is still uncertain, and we aimed to constrain it in South Korea using observation and model simulation. The results presented in this study may give useful information for future studies on drought stress on isoprene emissions.
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Coastal regions are susceptible to variable and high ozone which is difficult to simulate. We developed a method to characterize large datasets of multi-dimensional measurements from lidar instruments taken in coastal regions. Using the clustered ozone groups, we evaluated model performance in simulating the coastal ozone variability vertically and diurnally. The approach allowed us to pinpoint areas where the models succeed in simulating coastal ozone and areas where there are still gaps.
Yuxuan Wang, Nan Lin, Wei Li, Alex Guenther, Joey C. Y. Lam, Amos P. K. Tai, Mark J. Potosnak, and Roger Seco
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 14189–14208, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-14189-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-14189-2022, 2022
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Drought can cause large changes in biogenic isoprene emissions. In situ field observations of isoprene emissions during droughts are confined by spatial coverage and, thus, provide limited constraints. We derived a drought stress factor based on satellite HCHO data for MEGAN2.1 in the GEOS-Chem model using water stress and temperature. This factor reduces the overestimation of isoprene emissions during severe droughts and improves the simulated O3 and organic aerosol responses to droughts.
Elizabeth Klovenski, Yuxuan Wang, Susanne E. Bauer, Kostas Tsigaridis, Greg Faluvegi, Igor Aleinov, Nancy Y. Kiang, Alex Guenther, Xiaoyan Jiang, Wei Li, and Nan Lin
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 13303–13323, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-13303-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-13303-2022, 2022
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Severe drought stresses vegetation and causes reduced emission of isoprene. We study the impact of including a new isoprene drought stress (yd) parameterization in NASA GISS ModelE called DroughtStress_ModelE, which is specifically tuned for ModelE. Inclusion of yd leads to better simulated isoprene emissions at the MOFLUX site during the severe drought of 2012, reduced overestimation of OMI satellite ΩHCHO (formaldehyde column), and improved simulated O3 (ozone) during drought.
Subin Yoon, Alexander Kotsakis, Sergio L. Alvarez, Mark G. Spychala, Elizabeth Klovenski, Paul Walter, Gary Morris, Ernesto Corrales, Alfredo Alan, Jorge A. Diaz, and James H. Flynn
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 15, 4373–4384, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-15-4373-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-15-4373-2022, 2022
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SO2 is adverse to human health and the environment. A single SO2 sonde was developed to provide direct SO2 measurement with a greater vertical extent, a lower limit of detection, and less uncertainty relative to the previous dual-sonde method. The single sonde was tested in the field near volcanoes and anthropogenic sources where the sonde measured SO2 ranging from 0.5 to 940 ppb. This lighter-weight payload can be a great candidate to attach to small drones and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Wei Li and Yuxuan Wang
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 7843–7859, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-7843-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-7843-2022, 2022
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Fine dust is an important component of PM2.5 and can be largely modulated by droughts. In contrast to the increase in dust in the southwest USA where major dust sources are located, dust in the southeast USA is affected more by long-range transport from Africa and decreases under droughts. Both the transport and emissions of African dust are weakened when the southeast USA is under droughts, which reveals how regional-scale droughts can influence aerosol abundance through long-range transport.
Xueying Liu, Amos P. K. Tai, and Ka Ming Fung
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 17743–17758, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-17743-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-17743-2021, 2021
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With the rising food need, more intense agricultural activities will cause substantial perturbations to the nitrogen cycle, aggravating surface air pollution and imposing stress on terrestrial ecosystems. We studied how these ecosystem changes may modify biosphere–atmosphere exchanges, and further exert secondary effects on air quality, and demonstrated a link between agricultural activities and ozone air quality via the modulation of vegetation and soil biogeochemistry by nitrogen deposition.
Alexander A. T. Bui, Henry W. Wallace, Sarah Kavassalis, Hariprasad D. Alwe, James H. Flynn, Matt H. Erickson, Sergio Alvarez, Dylan B. Millet, Allison L. Steiner, and Robert J. Griffin
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 17031–17050, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-17031-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-17031-2021, 2021
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Differences in atmospheric species above and below a forest canopy provide insight into the relative importance of local mixing, long-range transport, and chemical processes in determining vertical gradients in atmospheric particles in a forested environment. This helps in understanding the flux of climate-relevant material out of the forest to the atmosphere. We studied this in a remote forest using vertically resolved measurements of gases and particles.
Candice L. Sirmollo, Don R. Collins, Jordan M. McCormick, Cassandra F. Milan, Matthew H. Erickson, James H. Flynn, Rebecca J. Sheesley, Sascha Usenko, Henry W. Wallace, Alexander A. T. Bui, Robert J. Griffin, Matthew Tezak, Sean M. Kinahan, and Joshua L. Santarpia
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 14, 3351–3370, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-3351-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-3351-2021, 2021
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The newly developed portable 1 m3 CAGE chamber systems were characterized using data acquired during a 2-month field study in 2016 in a forested area north of Houston, TX, USA. Concentrations of several oxidant and organic compounds measured in the chamber were found to closely agree with those calculated with a zero-dimensional model. By tracking the modes of injected monodisperse particles, a pattern change was observed for hourly averaged growth rates between late summer and early fall.
Miguel Ricardo A. Hilario, Ewan Crosbie, Michael Shook, Jeffrey S. Reid, Maria Obiminda L. Cambaliza, James Bernard B. Simpas, Luke Ziemba, Joshua P. DiGangi, Glenn S. Diskin, Phu Nguyen, F. Joseph Turk, Edward Winstead, Claire E. Robinson, Jian Wang, Jiaoshi Zhang, Yang Wang, Subin Yoon, James Flynn, Sergio L. Alvarez, Ali Behrangi, and Armin Sorooshian
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 3777–3802, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-3777-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-3777-2021, 2021
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This study characterizes long-range transport from major Asian pollution sources into the tropical northwest Pacific and the impact of scavenging on these air masses. We combined aircraft observations, HYSPLIT trajectories, reanalysis, and satellite retrievals to reveal distinct composition and size distribution profiles associated with specific emission sources and wet scavenging. The results of this work have implications for international policymaking related to climate and health.
Sally S.-C. Wang and Yuxuan Wang
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 11065–11087, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11065-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-11065-2020, 2020
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A model consisting of multiple machine learning algorithms is developed to predict wildfire burned area over the south central US and explains key environmental drivers. The developed model alleviates the issue of unevenly distributed data and predicts burned grids and burned areas with good accuracy. The model reveals climate variability such as relative humidity anomalies and antecedent drought severity contributes the most to the total burned area for winter–spring and summer fire season.
Li Zhang, Meiyun Lin, Andrew O. Langford, Larry W. Horowitz, Christoph J. Senff, Elizabeth Klovenski, Yuxuan Wang, Raul J. Alvarez II, Irina Petropavlovskikh, Patrick Cullis, Chance W. Sterling, Jeff Peischl, Thomas B. Ryerson, Steven S. Brown, Zachary C. J. Decker, Guillaume Kirgis, and Stephen Conley
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 10379–10400, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-10379-2020, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-10379-2020, 2020
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Measuring and quantifying the sources of elevated springtime ozone in the southwestern US is challenging but relevant to the implications for control policy. Here we use intensive field measurements and two global models to study ozone sources in the region. We find that ozone from the stratosphere, wildfires, and Asia is an important source of high-ozone events in the region. Our analysis also helps understand the uncertainties in ozone simulations with individual models.
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Short summary
This study examined high offshore ozone events in Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, using boat data and WRF–CAMx modeling during the TRACER-AQ 2021 field campaign. On average, high ozone is caused by chemistry due to the regional transport of volatile organic compounds and downwind advection of NOx from the ship channel. Two case studies show advection of ozone can be another process leading to high ozone, and accurate wind prediction is crucial for air quality forecasting in coastal areas.
This study examined high offshore ozone events in Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, using...
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