Effect of Secondary Organic Aerosol Amount and Condensational Behavior on Global Aerosol Size Distributions

• Recent research has shown that secondary organic aerosols (SOA) are major contributors to ultrafine particle growth to climatically relevant sizes, increasing global cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) concentrations within the continental boundary layer. Many models treat SOA solely as semivolatile, which leads to condensation of SOA proportional to the aerosol mass distribution; however, recent closure studies with field measurements show that a significant fraction of SOA condenses proportional to the aerosol surface area, which suggests a very low volatility. Additionally, while many global models contain only biogenic sources of SOA (with emissions generally 10-30 Tg yr(-1)), recent studies have shown a need for an additional source of SOA around 100 Tg yr(-1) correlated with anthropogenic carbon monoxide (CO) emissions is required to match measurements. Here, we explore the significance of these two findings using the GEOS-Chem-TOMAS global aerosol microphysics model. The percent change in the number of particles of size D-p > 40 nm (N40) within the continental boundary layer between the surface-area-and mass-distribution condensation schemes, both with the base biogenic SOA only, yielded a global increase of 8% but exceeds 100% in biogenically active regions. The percent change in N40 within the continental boundary layer between the base simulation (19 Tg yr(-1)) and the additional SOA (100 Tg yr(-1)) both using the surface area condensation scheme (very low volatility) yielded a global increase of 14%, and a global decrease in the number of particles of size D-p > 10 nm (N10) of 32%. These model simulations were compared to measured data from Hyytiala, Finland and other global locations and confirmed a decrease in the model-measurement bias. Thus, treating SOA as very low volatile as well as including additional SOA correlated with anthropogenic CO emissions causes a significant global increase in the number of climatically relevant sized particles, and therefore we must continue to refine our SOA treatments in aerosol microphysics models.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Aerosols

CCN

SOA

condensation

volatility

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)