Sulfate Aerosol Formation and Oxidation Pathways on Haze Event over East Asia Region Focusing on Korea.

Abstract:

The aerosol transports from China largely contribute to high PM (Particulate Matter) concentration in Korea. Especially, secondary inorganic aerosol (SIA) such as nitrate, sulfate and ammonium are largely transported from China to Korea during haze event. The measured PM2.5 (Particle Matter with aerodynamic diameters less than 2.5㎛) concentrations at the supersite monitoring stations in Korea are normally over 100 ug/m3 and SIAs are major chemical species with more than 70% of PM2.5 during the event. According to our air quality forecast model, sulfate concentrations are largely under-predicted in winter and slightly over-predicted in summer. Those discrepancies between model predicted and observed sulfate concentrations are mainly due to uncertainties of precursor emissions of NOx, SO2, and VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) and chemical mechanism of the sulfate formation in the chemical forecast model of CMAQ (Community Multiscale Air Quality Model).

Formation of sulfate is chemically linked to primary emissions of sulfur dioxide and to be abundancy of atmospheric oxidants such as hydroxyl radical, hydrogen peroxide, ozone, methyl hydroperoxide, and peroxyacetic acid. All of these oxidant species are formed via photochemical reactions with NOx and VOCs.

The aim of this work is to investigate the dependency of sulfate formation on oxidant levels in winter and summer during episode event using CMAQ and its sulfate tracking probing tool. The sensitivity of the precursor emissions of SO2, NOx, VOCs and NH3 was also tested to understand the pathways of the sulfate formation.

The results show that long range transport from China is a major factor to determine sulfate level in Korea during haze events and dominant mechanisms in the sulfate formation are the gas-phase OH and aqueous phase H2O2 reactions. NOx-SO2-VOCs chemical regimes for the sulfate formation is the VOCs limited regimes in Korea. The further details of the sensitivity run of the precursor emissions and improvement in the sulfate prediction will be discussed in the presentation.