Identification

Title

Observations of glyoxal and formaldehyde as metrics for the anthropogenic impact on rural photochemistry

Abstract

We present simultaneous fast, in-situ measurements of formaldehyde and glyoxal from two rural campaigns, BEARPEX 2009 and BEACHON-ROCS, both located in Pinus Ponderosa forests with emissions dominated by biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Despite considerable variability in the formaldehyde and glyoxal concentrations, the ratio of glyoxal to formaldehyde, RGF, displayed a very regular diurnal cycle over nearly 2 weeks of measurements. The only deviations in RGF were toward higher values and were the result of a biomass burning event during BEARPEX 2009 and very fresh anthropogenic influence during BEACHON-ROCS. Other rapid changes in glyoxal and formaldehyde concentrations have hardly any affect on RGF and could reflect transitions between low and high NO regimes. The trend of increased RGF from both anthropogenic reactive VOC mixtures and biomass burning compared to biogenic reactive VOC mixtures is robust due to the short timescales over which the observed changes in RGF occurred. Satellite retrievals, which suggest higher RGF for biogenic areas, are in contrast to our observed trends. It remains important to address this discrepancy, especially in view of the importance of satellite retrievals and in situ measurements for model comparison. In addition, we propose that RGF represents a useful metric for biogenic or anthropogenic reactive VOC mixtures and, in combination with absolute concentrations of glyoxal and formaldehyde, furthermore represents a useful metric for the extent of anthropogenic influence on overall reactive VOC processing via NOx. In particular, RGF yields information about not simply the VOCs dominating reactivity in an airmass, but the VOC processing itself that is directly coupled to ozone and secondary organic aerosol production.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d74b322p

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2012-10-22T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact