A record-breaking severe heat wave was recorded in southeast Korea from 11 July to 15 August 2018, and the numerical sensitivity simulations of volatile organic compound (VOC) to secondarily generated particulate matter with diameter of less than 2.5 µm (PM2.5) concentrations were studied in the Busan and Ulsan metropolitan areas in southeast Korea. A weather research and forecasting (WRF) model coupled with chemistry (WRF-Chem) was employed, and we carried out VOC emission sensitivity simulations to investigate variations in PM2.5 concentrations during the heat wave period that occurred from 11 July to 15 August 2018. In our study, when anthropogenic VOC emissions from the Comprehensive Regional Emissions Inventory for Atmospheric Transport Experiment-2015 (CREATE-2015) inventory were increased by approximately a factor of five in southeast Korea, a better agreement with observations of PM2.5 mass concentrations was simulated, implying an underestimation of anthropogenic VOC emissions over southeast Korea. The simulated secondary organic aerosol (SOA) fraction, in particular, showed greater dominance during high temperature periods such as 19–21 July, 2018, with the SOA fractions of 42.3% (in Busan) and 34.3% (in Ulsan) among a sub-total of seven inorganic and organic components. This is considerably higher than observed annual mean organic carbon (OC) fraction (28.4 ± 4%) among seven components, indicating the enhancement of secondary organic aerosols induced by photochemical reactions during the heat wave period in both metropolitan areas. The PM2.5 to PM10 ratios were 0.69 and 0.74, on average, during the study period in the two cities. These were also significantly higher than the typical range in those cities, which was 0.5–0.6 in 2018. Our simulations implied that extremely high temperatures with no precipitation are significantly important to the secondary generation of PM2.5 with higher secondary organic aerosol fraction via photochemical reactions in southeastern Korean cities. Other possible relationships between anthropogenic VOC emissions and temperature during the heat wave episode are also discussed in this study.
Urban photochemical ozone (O3) formation regimes (NOx- and VOC-limited regimes) at nine megacities in East Asia were diagnosed based on near-surface O3 columns from 900 to 700 hPa, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and formaldehyde (HCHO), which were inferred from measurements by ozone-monitoring instruments (OMI) for 2014–2018. The nine megacities included Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Shanghai, Seoul, Busan, Tokyo, and Osaka. The space-borne HCHO–to–NO2 ratio (FNR) inferred from the OMI was applied to nine megacities and verified by a series of sensitivity tests of Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) simulations by halving the NOx and VOC emissions. The results showed that the satellite-based FNRs ranged from 1.20 to 2.62 and the regimes over the nine megacities were identified as almost NOx-saturated conditions, while the domain-averaged FNR in East Asia was >2. The results of WRF–Chem sensitivity modeling show that O3 increased when the NOx emissions reduced, whereas VOC emission reduction showed a significant decrease in O3, confirming the characteristics of VOC-limited conditions in all of the nine megacities. When both NOx and VOC emissions were reduced, O3 decreased in most cities, but increased in the three lowest-FNRs megacities, such as Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo, where weakened O3 titration caused by NOx reduction had a larger enough effect to offset O3 suppression induced by the decrease in VOCs. Our model results, therefore, indicated that the immediate VOC emission reduction is a key controlling factor to decrease megacity O3 in East Asia, and also suggested that both VOC and NOx reductions may not be of broad utility in O3 abatement in megacities and should be considered judiciously in highly NOx-saturated cities in East Asia.
The goal of this research is to examine the recent decade-long (2000~2014) trends of national background concentrations over China, Japan, and Korea. Based on the Long-range Transboundary Air Pollutants in Northeast Asia (LTP) project, which is three-party collaboration project among three countries, we investigated the long-term trends of national background PM 10 concentrations in three countries over the recent 15 years, including the 2008 Beijing Olympic Game period. In accordance with the agreement among three countries, a total of 8 national background sites: three national background monitoring sites in China (2 sites in Dalian, and 1 in Xiamen), three sites in Korea (Ganghwa, Gosan, and Taean), and two sites in Japan (Oki and Rishiri), were chosen for the trend analysis.The results showed that Chinese background concentration recorded the highest level overall. However, the rapid declining recent trends of annual median (50 th -percentile) values were surprisingly detected since 2006 or 2007 in every site in China, with the most rapidly decreasing rate ( -18.6±10.3%/year) over 2006~2007, and the second most rapidly decreasing rate ( -18.0±1.5%/year) over 2007~2008. Based on the previous statistical literature, we concluded that this declining trends were due to the emission reduction of PM 10 concentrations in China for 2008 Beijing Olympic Game. In Korea, Ganghwa was also showing the decreasing trends over the recent years since 2006, which is also well accorded with the decreasing period of Chinese background concentrations. Taean also implied some impact of Beijing Olympic Game, showing small but detectable decreasing trends, while Gosan showed the increasing tendencies probably due to the near-urban influences. However, since 2012, most sites in both China and Korea showed strong increasing trends, undoubtedly implying the increasement of both emission in
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