Reactive Nitrogen Partitioning Enhances the Contribution of Canadian Wildfire Plumes to US Ozone Air Quality

Lin, Meiyun; Horowitz, Larry W.; Hu, Lu; Permar, Wade

doi:10.1029/2024gl109369

i

Reactive Nitrogen Partitioning Enhances the Contribution of Canadian Wildfire Plumes to US Ozone Air Quality

2024
By Lin, Meiyun ; Horowitz, Larry W. ; Hu, Lu ; ...

Details

Journal Title:

Geophysical Research Letters
Personal Author:

Lin, Meiyun ; Horowitz, Larry W. ; Hu, Lu ; Permar, Wade
NOAA Program & Office:

OAR (Oceanic and Atmospheric Research) ; GFDL (Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory)
Description:

Quantifying the variable impacts of wildfire smoke on ozone air quality is challenging. Here we use airborne measurements from the 2018 Western Wildfire Experiment for Cloud Chemistry, Aerosol Absorption, and Nitrogen (WE‐CAN) to parameterize emissions of reactive nitrogen (NOy) from wildfires into peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN; 37%), NO3− (27%), and NO (36%) in a global chemistry‐climate model with 13 km spatial resolution over the contiguous US. The NOy partitioning, compared with emitting all NOy as NO, reduces model ozone bias in near‐fire smoke plumes sampled by the aircraft and enhances ozone downwind by 5–10 ppbv when Canadian smoke plumes travel to Washington, Utah, Colorado, and Texas. Using multi‐platform observations, we identify the smoke‐influenced days with daily maximum 8‐hr average (MDA8) ozone of 70–88 ppbv in Kennewick, Salt Lake City, Denver and Dallas. On these days, wildfire smoke enhanced MDA8 ozone by 5–25 ppbv, through ozone produced remotely during plume transport and locally via interactions of smoke plume with urban emissions.
Source:

Geophysical Research Letters, 51(15)
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1029/2024gl109369
ISSN:

0094-8276 ; 1944-8007
Format:

pdf
Publisher:

American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Document Type:

Journal Article
Funding:

Grant no. NA17OAR4310010 ; Grant no. NA17OAR4310001
License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Rights Information:

CC BY
Compliance:

Library
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha-512:babf8eeb53f9caa2c4c99b9201481000fffeade7a55b0d652f216e1963c224c8e2b74063c8d9b267444fc427c70d4ea5db4f13242b7f189a90dc13d669965395
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/67733/noaa_67733_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 5.27 MB ]

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