Current projects

Understanding the climate change penalty on air quality

Team member: Jinxuan CHEN, Wanying KANG, Aoxing ZHANG, Yiqi ZHENG

Constraining the sources of carbonaceous aerosols in China

Team member: Nan LI

Developing a physics-based parameterization scheme for organic aerosol size evolution

Team member: Li XING

Constraining historical black carbon emissions in China (1850-2000)

Team member: Yue JIAN

Accounting for the impacts of the subgrid variability of RH on aerosol optical depth in large-scale models

Team member: Ye QING

Mapping volatile organic compound emissions using formaldehyde measurements from satellites

Volatile organic compounds (VOC) is an important class of atmospheric constituents, impacting the production of ozone, the oxidation power of the atmosphere, the lifetime of other green house gases and pollutants, and the production of organic aerosols.

VOCs are emitted into the atmosphere from both natural and anthropogenic activities, and quantifying these many overlapping sources can be a challenge. We use satellite observations of formaldehyde (HCHO), an oxidation product of many VOCs, to make 'top-down' estimates of VOC emissions from each source.

Publication: Fu et al. [2007], Millet et al. [2007], Palmer et al. [2006]

Team member: Hansen CAO, Heng TIAN

Understanding the sources and production mechanisms of organic aerosols

Secondary organic aerosols (SOA) are the organic mass transferred into the particulate phase in the atmosphere. Many recent observations have found SOA concentrations to be much higher than can be explained by current models in most parts of the atmosphere.

Using a global 3-D atmospheric chemistry model, we investigate the missing source of SOA. In particular, we find that the heteorogeneous uptake of dicarbonyls in aeorsols and clouds can help explained the observed SOA concentrations and variability.

Publication: Fu et al., [2009], Fu et al. [2008], Henze et al. [2008], van Donkelaar et al. [2007]

Team member: Li XING

Constraining the global budget of atmospheric oxygenated organics

Oxygenated VOCs (OVOCs), including acetone, methanol, etc, are present in high concentrations throughout the atmosphere. Their abundance and distribution have large impacts on the oxidation power of the troposphere, particularly in remote regions.

The budgets of OVOCs are not well understood. One of the major sources of uncertainty is whether the ocean acts as a source or a sink to the atmosphere. The air/sea exchange is complexly regulated by both physical and biological conditions at the interface. We propose a new air/sea transfer module to account for these physical and biological processes, including the presence of microfilms, production/consumption of organic matter by marine life, and other photochemical processes.

Team member: Hansen CAO, Cenlin HE

Completed projects

Impacts of smoke plume injection heights over the Peninsular Southeast Asia on pollutant long-range transport