Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published December 15, 2004 | Supplemental Material
Journal Article Open

Ozone Formation Potential of Organic Compounds in the Eastern United States: A Comparison of Episodes, Inventories, and Domains

Abstract

Direct sensitivity analysis is applied for 3-D assessment of ozone reactivity (or ozone formation potential) in the Eastern United States. A detailed chemical mechanism (SAPRC-99) is implemented in a multiscale air quality model to calculate the reactivity of 32 explicit and 9 lumped compounds. Simulations are carried out for two different episodes and two different emission scenarios. While absolute reactivities of VOCs show a great deal of spatial variability, relative reactivities (normalized to the reactivity of a base mixture) produce a significantly more homogeneous field. Three types of domain-wide relative reactivity metrics are formed for 1-h and 8-h averaging intervals. In general, ozone reactivity metrics (with the exception of those based on daily peak ozone) are fairly robust and consistent between different episodes or emission scenarios. The 3-D metrics also show fairly similar rankings for VOC reactivity when compared to the box model scales. However, the 3-D metrics have a noticeably narrower range for species reactivities, as they result in lower reactivity for some of the more reactive, radical-producing VOCs (especially aldehydes). As expected, episodes and emission scenarios with less radical availability have higher absolute reactivities for all species and higher relative reactivities for the more radical-producing species. Finally, comparing the results with those from a different domain (central California) shows that relative reactivity metrics are comparable over these two significantly different domains.

Additional Information

© 2004 American Chemical Society. Received for review December 30, 2003. Revised manuscript received August 5, 2004. Accepted August 17, 2004. Publication Date (Web): November 16, 2004. This work was supported by the American Chemistry Council and the California Air Resources Board and by funding from U.S. EPA under contracts RD-83096001 and RD-82897601. The authors are grateful to Dr. William Carter for his kind help, in particular with base mixture composition and least-squares metric definition. We also thank Dr. Jana Milford for providing the SAPRC-99 mechanism used in this study. The spatial plots in this paper are produced using PAVE by MCNC.

Attached Files

Supplemental Material - es035471asi20041114_043457.pdf

Files

es035471asi20041114_043457.pdf
Files (125.2 kB)
Name Size Download all
md5:8fa0e20bd4ef41d85bb16e4e329a78ba
125.2 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 25, 2023