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Published November 1986 | public
Journal Article

On Some Aspects of Nighttime Atmospheric Chemistry

Abstract

Nighttime atmospheric chemistry is simulated in two different situations: an offshore oceanic environment, the Santa Barbara Channel region of the south central coast of California, and a dry environment, the Mojave Desert of California. In the marine case, conversion of NOₓ to peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) and HNO₃ is rapid; HNO₃ is formed by homogeneous hydrolysis of N₂O₅ and by nitrate radical reactions with organic gases, and the rate of HNO₃ production is limited by the abundance of O₃. Even in the desert case, predictions indicate that homogeneous hydrolysis of N₂O₅ dominates HNO₃ formation at night. The implications of recent studies concerning the unimolecular decomposition of NO₃ are discussed.

Additional Information

© 1986 American Chemical Society. Received for review September 20, 1985. Revised manuscript received April 18, 1986. Accepted July 21, 1986. This project was funded, in part, by the California Air Resources Board under Agreement A2-150-32. We thank J. G. Calvert and H. Johnston for providing a preprint of their article and for a number of helpful comments on a draft of the manuscript.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 20, 2023