A234-06
Formaldehyde Evolution In Wildfire Plumes During FIREX-AQ

Wednesday, 16 December 2020: 07:20
Virtual
Jin Liao, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Universities Space Research Association, Greenbelt, MD, United States, Glenn M Wolfe, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, Reem A Hannun, Harvard Univ/Anderson Group, Cambridge, MA, United States, Jason M St Clair, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, United States, Thomas F Hanisco, NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, Jessica Gilman, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, Aaron Lamplugh, CIRES and NOAA ESRL, Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, Vanessa Selimovic, University of Montana, Department of Chemistry, Missoula, MT, United States, Glenn S Diskin, NASA Langley Research Ctr, Hampton, VA, United States, John B Nowak, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, United States, Samuel R Hall, NCAR, Denver, CO, United States and Kirk Ullmann, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Atmospheric Chemistry Observations and Modeling Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
Formaldehyde (HCHO) is one of the most abundant non-methane volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by fires. HCHO is also chemically produced and lost as a fire plume evolves, and it can be an important oxidant precursor. Here we examine HCHO evolution in wildfire plumes sampled by the NASA DC8 during FIREX-AQ field campaign to disentangle the processes controlling HCHO. We find that variability in photolysis rate is an important factor in determining whether dilution-corrected HCHO increases or decreases with plume age. Plume-to-plume variability in secondary HCHO production tracks OH abundance, suggesting that variability in OH, as opposed to variability in the reactive VOC pool, drives the differences in chemical evolution among different plumes.
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