Journal
ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
Volume 12, Issue 20, Pages 9529-9543Publisher
COPERNICUS GESELLSCHAFT MBH
DOI: 10.5194/acp-12-9529-2012
Keywords
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Funding
- National Science Foundation [ATM 0852406]
- NCAR BEACHON project, NASA-SBIR Phase I & II, Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [L518]
- Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation
- Austrian Academy of Sciences at the Institute of Ion Physics and Applied Physics
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Div Atmospheric & Geospace Sciences [0919317] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [21221001, 23710015] Funding Source: KAKEN
- Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [L 518] Funding Source: researchfish
- Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [L518] Funding Source: Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
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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, R-GF, displayed a very regular diurnal cycle over nearly 2 weeks of measurements. The only deviations in R-GF 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 R-GF and could reflect transitions between low and high NO regimes. The trend of increased R-GF 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 R-GF occurred. Satellite retrievals, which suggest higher R-GF 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 R-GF 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, R-GF 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.
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