Investigating the sensitivity in production of SOA from its precursor VOCs with different sources of emissions using an interactive chemistry climate model

Abstract

<p>The organic aerosols (OA) contribute significantly to fine particulate mass in the atmosphere, however, most global climate models do not include elaborate treatment associated with the production of secondary organic aerosols (SOA) involving complex chemical processes to save computational time. As a result, the concentrations of SOA simulated by these climate models are often highly uncertain. Moreover, very limited research has been done on SOA and its precursors, particularly on the contribution of individual sources towards the SOA concentrations across India. In this study, we investigate the sensitivity of the production of SOA from different VOC sources and different atmospheric oxidants by the Community Atmospheric Model version 4 coupled with an extensive interactive atmospheric chemistry module (CAM4-Chem). The main objective of our present research is to understand the contribution of individual sources of VOCs towards the production and distribution of SOA across the Indian region. We carried out a series of systematically designed simulations using the CAM4-Chem model to understand the sensitivity of simulated SOA over the Indian region to changes in only emissions of VOCs from anthropogenic, biogenic, and biomass burning emissions from preindustrial (PI) to present-day (PD) period. In order to avoid the influence of changes in meteorology from PI to PD on the production of SOA, all simulations are performed for the same period from 2004 to 2014 with identical meteorology prescribed to the model based on MERRA2 data, while the VOC emissions from anthropogenic, biogenic, and biomass burning sources are allowed to change from PI to PD in different simulations. Our results show that the simulated distribution of SOA over the Indian region in PD is linked to the significant changes in the emissions of VOCs from anthropogenic, biogenic, and biomass burning emissions sources from PI to PD. We find that the changes in emissions of VOCs from biogenic sources from PI to PD associated with land use and land cover changes contribute significantly along with the changes in emissions from anthropogenic sources towards the total changes in SOA distribution over the Indian region over the same period.  The global annual mean burden of SOA from our sensitivity simulations vary in the range of 0.65Tg to 0.80Tg due to variations in emission of different VOCs that are precursors to the production of SOA in the atmosphere. These sensitivity simulations improve our understanding of atmospheric chemistry and specifically about the formation of SOA from different precursor gases originating from diverse anthropogenic, biogenic, and biomass burning emissions sources. More results with greater detail will be presented.</p>