Inorganic Aerosol Precursor Emissions During SENEX: A Modeling Analysis Constrained by Aircraft, Satellite, and Surface Data

The primary objective of this project is to quantify emissions of the inorganic aerosol precursors NOx, SO2, and NH3 during the 2013 NOAA Southeast Nexus (SENEX) campaign using a combination of data gathered by the NOAA WP-3 research aircraft, satellite retrievals from the NASA Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI), the joint NOAA, NASA, and DOD Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), and the NASA Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES), and surface observations from the Southern Oxidant and Aerosol Study (SOAS). Ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate aerosols formed from NH3, NOx, and SO2 can harm human health and air quality, as well as alter the climate directly through the scattering and absorption of radiation and indirectly by changing cloud albedo, cloud lifetime, and precipitation. In addition, anthropogenic emissions of NOx, SO2, and NH3 may indirectly impact the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) from natural precursors such as isoprene and terpenes. Uncertainty in the emissions of the precursor gases NOx, SO2, and NH3 thus leads to uncertainty in the formation, vertical distribution, and radiative impacts of inorganic and organic aerosol, which in turn leads to significant uncertainties in predictions of future climate.