Brown Carbon Photolysis: Impacts of Organic and Inorganic Components in Cloud Water Proxies
Abstract
Solar radiation and photochemical processes drive a large fraction of chemical reactions in the atmosphere. In the condensed phase (aerosol, cloud droplets, fog) solar radiation can drive both primary and secondary photolysis reactions. This increases the challenge in characterizing lifetimes of molecules in these systems. Atmospheric brown carbon (BrC) consists of molecules that can absorb solar radiation in the visible region and thus can play important roles in chemical transformations and energy budgets in the atmosphere. Recent work has developed a deeper understanding for the sources and formation processes of BrC, but gaps remain in our understanding of their decomposition and lifetimes, especially in complex, condensed-phase atmospheric water and particles. Here, we utilize UV-vis spectroscopy methods to characterize the photochemical decomposition of model BrC molecules in cloud water proxies containing mixtures of secondary organic aerosol and inorganic components.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.A43K3241D
- Keywords:
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- 0305 Aerosols and particles;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0320 Cloud physics and chemistry;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 0368 Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTUREDE: 3311 Clouds and aerosols;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES