$0
University of California-Berkeley
California
Geosciences (GEO)
This project will investigate emissions from biomass burning and the resulting chemical mechanisms and processes that lead to the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in the atmosphere. New laboratory simulations will be performed, and the results will be compared with data from several recent field campaigns that measured emissions from wildfires to identify the gaps that have been observed between laboratory and field speciated organic aerosol. This effort is expected to broaden the knowledge of primary and secondary chemicals in the atmosphere from biomass burning and enable improvements in modeling their effects on air quality and climate.In this project, the PIs plan to: (1) conduct laboratory oxidation experiments of selected phenolic compounds under varying humidity and oxidizing conditions and obtain samples of the resulting SOA; (2) analyze the laboratory samples to provide molecular-level speciation of semi-volatile organic species; (3) elucidate and quantify novel tracers reflective of isolated biomass-burning related SOA formation mechanisms and processes (gas, particle, or aqueous phases, photolysis) and connect these with ambient observations for use in model development; and (4) update the open-access University of California, Berkeley, Goldstein Library of Organic Biogenic and Environmental Spectra (UCB-GLOBES) database with observed compounds for community use. The simulations are designed to bridge the gap observed between laboratory and field speciated organic aerosol.The project includes support for a postdoctoral scholar and several undergraduate students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.