Impact of organic nitrates on urban ozone production
Item
Title (Dublin Core)
Impact of organic nitrates on urban ozone production
Description (Dublin Core)
Urban O<sub>3</sub> is produced by photochemical chain reactions that amplify background O<sub>3</sub> in mixtures of gaseous nitrogen oxides (NO<sub>x</sub>) and organic molecules. Current thinking treats NO<sub>x</sub> and organics as independent variables that limit O<sub>3</sub> production depending on the NO<sub>x</sub> to organic ratio; in this paradigm, reducing organics either has no effect or reduces O<sub>3</sub>. We describe a theoretical counterexample where NO<sub>x</sub> and organics are strongly coupled and reducing organics increases O<sub>3</sub> production, and illustrate the example with observations from Mexico City. This effect arises from chain termination in the HO<sub>x</sub> and NO<sub>x</sub> cycles via organic nitrate production. We show that reductions in VOC reactivity that inadvertently reduce organic nitrate production rates will be counterproductive without concurrent reductions in NO<sub>x</sub> or other organics.
Creator (Dublin Core)
Farmer, D. K.
Perring, A. E.
Wooldridge, P. J.
Blake, D. R.
Baker, A.
Meinardi, S.
Huey, L. G.
Tanner, D.
Vargas, O.
Cohen, R. C.
Date (Dublin Core)
2018-01-15
Type (Dublin Core)
Text
Format (Dublin Core)
application/pdf
Identifier (Dublin Core)
10.5194/acp-11-4085-2011
https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/11/4085/2011/
Source (Dublin Core)
eISSN: 1680-7324
Language (Dublin Core)
eng
