This is a past event.

Modeling atmospheric chemistry across scales:  From the forest canopy to the regional scale

The emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC) are known to exert significant control on tropospheric composition and the oxidation capacity of the atmosphere through (1) the formation of ozone in the presence of reactive nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2 ) and sunlight, (2) the formation of secondary organic aerosols (SOA) through the transformation of its oxidation products, and (3) the regulation of hydrogen oxide radicals (HOx = OH + HO2 ).  Recently, new pathways of BVOC oxidation have been identified in low-NOx regions that rectify discrepancies between observations and BVOC-NOx -HOx chemistry in regional and global transport models.  However, these mechanisms do not show consistent improvement across a range of NOx concentrations.   I will discuss the use of different chemical mechanisms to simulate chemistry at the local scale within the forest canopy to understand atmospheric chemistry across a range of HOx-NOx-BVOC concentrations.  The implications of these results as we go from the local to the regional scale will be discussed , with the goal of elucidating how BVOC chemistry can be simulated across a range of NOx concentrations and spatial scales.

Part of the 2016 Earth Planetary and Space Sciences Institute (EPSSI) Seminar Series

Annual seminar series on topics related to Earth Planetary and Space Sciences and course UN 4000 REMOTE SENSING.