Hydroxyl radical measurements and oxidation capacity in a boreal forest environment
Abstract
Forests cover about one third of the earth's total land surface and are known to be an important global source of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) that are partly very reactive towards OH. Different types of forests are known to emit various characteristic BVOCs significantly influencing atmospheric oxidation chemistry. Measurements of OH and HO2 radicals in forest environments, however, reveal a serious lack of understanding of the underlying processes. The HUMPPA-COPEC intensive field campaign took place in summer 2010 at the SMEAR II station, located in Hyytiälä, Southern Finland, as collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the University of Helsinki. The main goal of the campaign was to investigate the summertime emissions and photochemistry in a boreal forest. Comprehensive measurements including observations of many VOCs, HOx, and total OH reactivity were conducted to increase our understanding of atmospheric self-cleaning processes based on detailed analysis of production and loss mechanisms of the hydroxyl radical. Also the HOx budget in a coniferous forest was examined by using direct calculations from measured species as well as an observationally constrained chemical box model in steady state. For HUMPPA-COPEC chemical reaction schemes considering isoprene as the predominant primary BVOC lead to an over prediction of the measured OH concentration by a factor of up to 4. However, only a minor fraction of the measured total OH reactivity can be explained by measured isoprene. A preliminary terpene mechanism, taking the most abundant terpenes measured during HUMPPA-COPEC-2010 and their oxidation products into account, improves the agreement between simulated and measured OH, but is not sufficient to explain the missing OH reactivity in all cases. HO2 is described reasonably well by the model for conditions where the modeled and measured total OH reactivity agree. For lower than measured reactivity, the HO2 mixing ratios are significantly under predicted indicating that the missing reactivity is an unaccounted source of HO2. An additional α-pinene equivalent is introduced into the model to match the measured total OH reactivity with the simulated one. The modification of the chemical mechanism is analyzed and discussed.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.A33K0299H
- Keywords:
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- 0300 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 0365 ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE / Troposphere: composition and chemistry