A224-0006
Formaldehyde Emissions Variability from Agricultural Burning
Wednesday, 16 December 2020
Poster
Glenn Wolfe1, Katrina Mai Cone2, Jin Liao3, Reem A Hannun4, Jason Michael St Clair5, Thomas F Hanisco1, Glenn S Diskin6, Joshua P DiGangi7, Hannah S Halliday8, John B Nowak7, Yonghoon Choi7, Amber Jeanine Soja9, Jessica L McCarty10, Emily Marie Gargulinski11, Alan Fried12, Petter Weibring12, Dirk Richter12, Carsten Warneke13, Matthew Mitchell Coggon14 and Georgios Gkatzelis13, (1)NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (2)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (3)Universities Space Research Association and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (4)Harvard Univ/Anderson Group, Cambridge, MA, United States, (5)Caltech, Pasadena, CA, United States, (6)NASA Langley Research Ctr, Hampton, VA, United States, (7)NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, United States, (8)Universities Space Research Association Columbia, Columbia, MD, United States, (9)National Institute of Aerospace, Hampton, VA, United States, (10)Miami University Oxford, Oxford, OH, United States, (11)Universities Space Research Association, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, United States, (12)University of Colorado at Boulder, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (13)CIRES and NOAA ESRL, Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (14)California Institute of Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Pasadena, CA, United States
Abstract:
Agricultural fires are a significant source of trace gases and aerosol, which adversely affect air quality and climate. The second most abundant species emitted from biomass burning, formaldehyde (HCHO) is classified by the EPA as a hazardous air pollutant, is a known carcinogen, and plays a role in the production of ozone. Using observations from the joint NASA-NOAA FIREX-AQ field campaign, we assess the factors controlling HCHO variability in agricultural fires throughout the Southeast U.S. Fuel type (e.g., corn vs. grass) strongly influences HCHO emission factors, but this reflects a more general trend of differences in modified combustion efficiency across fuel types. We also explore the co-variation of HCHO emissions with other VOC and compare these observations to results from recent lab investigations.
