Observations of N2O5 and NO3 at a suburban environment in Yangtze river delta in China: Estimating heterogeneous N2O5 uptake coefficients

Abstract

The nitrate radical (NO3) and dinitrogen pentoxide (N2O5) play an important role in the nocturnal atmosphere chemistry. Observations of NO3 radicals and N2O5 were performed in a semirural ground site at Tai'Zhou in polluted southern China using cavity ring down spectroscopy (CRDS) from 23 May to 15 June 2018. The observed NO3 and N2O5 concentrations were relatively low, with 1 min average value of 4.4 ± 2.2 and 26.0 ± 35.7 pptV, respectively. The N2O5 uptake coefficient was determined to be from 0.027 to 0.107 based on steady state lifetime method. Fast N2O5 hydrolysis was the largest contributor to the loss of NO3 and contributed to substantial nitrate formation, with an average value of 14.83 ± 6.01 µg/m3. Further analysis shows that the N2O5 heterogeneous reactions dominated the nocturnal NOx loss and the nocturnal NOx loss rate is 0.14 ± 0.02 over this region.