Understanding the Emerging Contribution of Volatile Chemical Products and Food Cooking to Air Quality, the Aerosol Size Distribution, and Climate-Relevant Properties Over Urban to Regional Scales

While emissions from traditional sources have been strictly controlled, newly identified sources, namely VCPs and food cooking, may contribute substantially to the atmospheric chemistry and composition as well as air quality from urban to regional scales. The goal of this research is to study the emerging role of VCPs and food cooking emissions on ozone and organic aerosol, as well as the aerosol size distribution in the urban atmosphere, in the evolving downwind plume, and on regional aerosol properties. The project has three objectives. In Objective 1, recent laboratory data will be leveraged to develop mechanisms and parameterizations to represent ozone and aerosol formation from VCPs and cooking sources. In Objective 2, aircraft observations and plume-model simulations will be used to understand the formation and evolution of ozone and aerosol mass, size, and composition in urban plumes, sampled during the AEROMMA field campaign. In Objective 3, the mechanisms and parameters developed and evaluated in the previous objectives will be used in a regional chemistry-climate model (WRF-Chem) to simulate the atmospheric chemistry and air quality in NYC and four other North American cities studied during the AEROMMA field campaign. The plume-model and WRF-Chem simulations will quantify the contribution of VCPs and cooking sources to the urban and regional, ozone and aerosol burden and test if the inclusion of these sources improves the model performance in these cities.