A12A-02
The Impact of Oil and Natural Gas Activity on Ozone Formation in the Colorado Front Range
Monday, 14 December 2015: 10:35
3010 (Moscone West)
Rebecca S Hornbrook1, Eric C Apel2, Alan J Hills3, Donald Ray Blake4, Nicola J Blake5, Jason Schroeder4, Alan Fried6, Petter Weibring7, Dirk Richter7, James Walega7, Lee Mauldin8, Christopher A Cantrell6, Samuel R Hall1, Kirk Ullmann1, Andrew John Weinheimer1, Denise Montzka1, John Joseph Orlando1, Geoffrey S Tyndall3, Teresa Lynn Campos1, Meghan H Stell1, Brian Heikes9, Victoria Treadaway9, Daniel W O'Sullivan10, L Gregory Huey11, David Tanner12, Ronald C Cohen13, Frank M Flocke1, Gabriele Pfister3, Christoph Johannes Knote14, Louisa K Emmons1 and FRAPPE Science Team, (1)National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (2)University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)NCAR, Boulder, CO, United States, (4)University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States, (5)University California Irvine, Vineyard Haven, MA, United States, (6)Univ of Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States, (7)University of Colorado at Boulder, INSTAAR, Boulder, CO, United States, (8)Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, United States, (9)URI GSO, Narragansett, RI, United States, (10)US Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD, United States, (11)Georgia Institute of Technology Main Campus, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Atlanta, GA, United States, (12)Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, United States, (13)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (14)Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Munich, Germany
Abstract:
The 2014 Front Range Air Pollution and Photochemistry Experiment (FRAPPE) was a ground-based and airborne field study designed to characterize and understand air quality in the Colorado Front Range, where National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) ozone levels are frequently exceeded during summertime. A primary goal of the study was to determine the factors controlling surface ozone in the Front Range. As part of the project, measurements of many trace gases were observed on board the NSF/NCAR C-130 by a suite of instrumentation, including the NCAR Trace Organic Gas Analyzer (TOGA), which made measurements of a set of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). VOCs are crucial for characterizing emissions and photochemical processing in the Front Range, as well as the air transported into the region. During recent years, oil and natural gas (O&NG) activity in the Front Range has been growing rapidly. Ratios of observed aromatic hydrocarbons, butanes and pentanes demonstrate distinct fingerprinting that can be used to distinguish both between different types of O&NG activities and between O&NG extraction regions in the FRAPPE study region and beyond. Using the observed hydrocarbon data along with other trace gas observations, we will compare contributions of O&NG emissions to OH reactivities in different regions in the Front Range, and present box model results demonstrating the impact of O&NG activities on ozone formation.
