A large underestimate of the pyrogenic source of formic acid inferred from space-borne measurements.

Abstract:

Formic acid (HCOOH) is one of the most abundant carboxylic acids in the atmosphere, and a dominant source of acidity in the global troposphere. Recent work has revealed a major gap in our present understanding of the atmospheric formic acid budget, with observed concentrations much larger than can be reconciled with current estimates of its sources. In this work, we employ new space-based observations from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) satellite instrument with the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model to better quantify the source of atmospheric formic acid from biomass burning, and assess the degree to which this source can help close the large budget gap for this species. The space-based formic acid data reveal a severe model underestimate for HCOOH that is most prominent over tropical biomass burning regions, indicating a major missing source of organic acids from fires. Based on two independent methods for inferring the fractional contribution of fires to the measured HCOOH abundance, we find that the pyrogenic HCOOH:CO enhancement ratio measured by TES (including direct emissions plus secondary production) is 5-10 times higher than current estimates of the direct emission ratio, providing evidence of substantial secondary production of HCOOH in fire plumes. We further show that current models significantly underestimate (by a factor of 2-6) the total primary and secondary source of HCOOH from tropical fires.