Modeling Gas-phase Glyoxal and Associated Secondary Organic Aerosol Formation in a Megacity using WRF/Chem

Organic aerosol (OA) as one of a major fine particulate matter in the atmosphere plays an important role in air pollution, human health, and climate forcing. OA is composed of directly emitted primary organic aerosol and chemically produced secondary organic aerosols (SOA). Despite much recent progress in understanding SOA formation, current air quality models cannot explain the magnitude and growth of atmospheric SOA, due to high uncertainties in sources, properties, and chemical reactions of precursors and formation pathways of SOA. Recent laboratory and modeling studies showed that glyoxal may serve as an important SOA precursor in the condensed solution of inorganic or organic aerosol particles (e.g., ammonium sulfate, fulvic acid, and amino acids). In this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting model with chemistry (WRF/Chem) is modified to account for the latest observed gas-phase yields of glyoxal from various volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and the associated SOA formation in the aqueous aerosol phase. The SOA formation in the aqueous aerosol phase is implemented using two approaches. In the first approach, two simplified parameterizations are used to represent the lumped particle-phase chemical processes under dark conditions and photochemical surface uptake. In the second approach, more detailed kinetic glyoxal reactions such as reversible glyoxal uptake, dimer formation of glyoxal, and oligomerization are treated and resolved explicitly. The updated WRF/Chem is assessed over the Mexico City and the surrounding region during March 2006 using the MILAGRO campaign data. Various observations such as organic matter from Aerodyne Aerosol Mass Spectrometer and VOCs from Proton-transfer Ion Trap Mass Spectrometry were compared. The preliminary results showed that the addition of the SOA formation from glyoxal in aqueous particles brings SOA predictions into a better agreement with field observations, in particular in presence of high relative humidity. The simulation with updated glyoxal yields gives a factor of 2 higher mixing ratio of glyoxal. The uncertainties in the model treatments as well as future work will also be discussed.