A224-0010
Emissions from Western Wildfires and Southeastern Agricultural Fires: An analysis of VOC measurements from the NASA DC-8 during FIREX-AQ

Wednesday, 16 December 2020
Poster
Aaron Lamplugh1, Vanessa Selimovic2, Matthew Mitchell Coggon1, Georgios Gkatzelis1, Kanako Sekimoto3, Carsten Warneke1, Donald Ray Blake4, Barbara Barletta4, Brenna Biggs4, Nicola J Blake4, Alicia Hoffman4, Alex Jarnot4, Simone Meinardi4, Isobel J Simpson4, Christopher Woods4, Eric C Apel5, Rebecca S Hornbrook5, Alan J Hills5, Glenn S Diskin6, Thaopaul V Bui7, Christopher D Holmes8, Alan Fried9, Petter Weibring9, Dirk Richter9, James Walega9 and Jessica Gilman10, (1)CIRES and NOAA ESRL, Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States, (2)University of Montana, Department of Chemistry, Missoula, MT, United States, (3)Yokohama CIty University, Graduate School of Nanobioscience, Yokohama, Japan, (4)University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States, (5)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (6)NASA Langley Research Ctr, Hampton, VA, United States, (7)NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (8)Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United States, (9)University of Colorado at Boulder, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (10)NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Chemical Sciences Laboratory, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
During the 2019 Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) research project, the NASA DC-8 Airborne Science Laboratory sampled biomass burning emissions from western wildfires and southeastern agricultural fires. In total, the NASA DC-8 sampled nearly 100 different fires over 20 US states in a period of 2 months. Several instruments onboard the DC-8 were capable of quantifying volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including the NOAA integrated whole air sample GC-MS (NOAA iWAS/GC-MS), the NOAA Proton Transfer Reaction Mass Spectrometer (NOAA PTR-MS), the NCAR Trace Organic Gas Analyzer GC-MS (NCAR TOGA/GC-MS), the University of California Irvine whole air sampler GC-FID/ECD/MS (UCI WAS/GC-FID/ECD/MS), and the CU Boulder Compact Atmospheric Multi-Species Spectrometer (CAMS). The chromatography-based, discrete sampling systems provided a high-degree of chemical detail that complemented the high-time resolution measurements.

Here we compare VOC measurements and highlight differences in the sampling strategies and capabilities of the suite of instruments onboard the NASA DC-8. Preliminary results show good agreement for the majority of species compared between the VOC instruments onboard the DC-8. These results will be used to identify and characterize variability within smoke plumes and between different fires and fire types. For example, agricultural fires had lower VOC/CO enhancement ratios compared to wildfires. VOC-OH reactivity estimations from NOAA iWAS measurements will be used to parameterize chemical aging within biomass burning smoke plumes.

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