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Aerosols

Aerosol water alone cannot fix organic-aerosol bias

Pye HOT, Murphy BN, Xu L, et al. · Atmospheric chemistry and physics · 2017

Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC

Adding aerosol liquid water to SOA partitioning without non-ideality overpredicts nighttime carbon; daytime OA in the southeast US still needs extra sources.

Key findings

The non-ideal (γ ≠ 1) case cut OC bias to −4, −10, and −2% at IMPROVE, CSN, and SEARCH. Assuming ideality overestimates nighttime aerosol water and carbon. Water-soluble OA was ~90% of total OA in the southeast US summer, but daytime OA remains underpredicted even with water in the partitioning medium.

Methodology

Authors updated CMAQ over the eastern United States for June 2013 (SOAS) so semivolatile SOA could interact with aerosol water, including organic-phase water uptake and a non-ideal activity-coefficient case, then compared OC with IMPROVE, CSN, and SEARCH.

Limitations

The work is one summer over the eastern US; it does not identify the missing daytime SOA precursors, and POA is still overestimated by about a factor of two, compensating some SOA underestimate.

How this study connects

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