Life Sciences Commons^™

Importance Of Secondary Sources In The Atmospheric Budgets Of Formic And Acetic Acids, Fabien Paulot, Debra Wunch, John D. Crounse, G C Toon, Dylan B. Millet, Peter F. Decarlo, C Vigouroux, Nicholas M. Deutscher, G Gonzalez Abad, J Notholt, Thorsten Warneke, J Hannigan, Carsten Warneke, Joost A. De Gouw, Edward Dunlea, M. De Maziere, David W. Griffith, P Bernath, J L. Jimenez, Paul O. Wennberg

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

We present a detailed budget of formic and acetic acids, two of the most abundant trace gases in the atmosphere. Our bottom-up estimate of the global source of formic and acetic acids are ∼1200 and ∼1400 Gmol/yr, dominated by photochemical oxidation of biogenic volatile organic compounds, in particular isoprene. Their sinks are dominated by wet and dry deposition. We use the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model to evaluate this budget against an extensive suite of measurements from ground, ship and satellite-based Fourier transform spectrometers, as well as from several aircraft campaigns over North America. The model captures the seasonality of formic …