Forest emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), such as isoprene and other terpenes, play a role in the production of tropospheric ozone and aerosols. In a northern Michigan forest, the direct measurement of total OH reactivity, which is the inverse of the OH lifetime, was significantly greater than expected. The difference between measured and expected OH reactivity, called the missing OH reactivity, increased with temperature, as did emission rates for terpenes and other BVOCs. These measurements are consistent with the hypothesis that unknown reactive BVOCs, perhaps terpenes, provide the missing OH reactivity.
Emissions of volatile chemicals control the hydroxyl radical (OH), the atmosphere's main cleansing agent, and thus the production of secondary pollutants. Accounting for all of these chemicals can be difficult, especially in environments with mixed urban and forest emissions. The first direct measurements of the atmospheric OH reactivity, the inverse of the OH lifetime, were made as part of the Southern Oxidant Study (SOS) at Cornelia Fort Airpark in Nashville, TN in summer 1999. Measured OH reactivity was typically 11 s(-1). Measured OH reactivity was 1.4 times larger than OH reactivity calculated from the sum of the products of measured chemical concentrations and their OH reaction rate coefficients. This difference is statistically significant at the 1sigma uncertainty level of both the measurements and the calculations but not the 2sigma uncertainty level. Measured OH reactivity was 1.3 times larger than the OH reactivity from a model that uses measured ambient concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), NO, NO2, SO2, and CO. However, it was within approximately 10% of the OH reactivity from a model that includes hydrocarbon measurements made in a Nashville tunnel and scaled to the ambient CO at Cornelia Fort Airpark. These comparisons indicate that 30% of the OH reactivity in Nashville may come from short-lived highly reactive VOCs that are not usually measured in field intensive studies or by US EPA's Photochemical Assessment Monitoring Stations.
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