Temperature-Dependent Evaporative Anthropogenic VOC Emissions Significantly Exacerbate Regional Ozone Pollution

Wenlu Wu; Tzung-May Fu; Steve R Arnold; Dominick V Spracklen; Aoxing Zhang; Wei Tao; Xiaolin Wang; Yue Hou; Jiajia Mo; Jiongkai Chen; Yumin Li; Xu Feng; Haipeng Lin; Zhijiong Huang; Junyu Zheng; Huizhong Shen; Lei Zhu; Chen Wang; Jianhuai Ye; Xin Yang

doi:10.1021/acs.est.3c09122

Temperature-Dependent Evaporative Anthropogenic VOC Emissions Significantly Exacerbate Regional Ozone Pollution

Environ Sci Technol. 2024 Mar 26;58(12):5430-5441. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.3c09122. Epub 2024 Mar 12.

Authors

Wenlu Wu^{1

2

3}, Tzung-May Fu^{1

2}, Steve R Arnold³, Dominick V Spracklen³, Aoxing Zhang^{1

2}, Wei Tao^{1

2}, Xiaolin Wang⁴, Yue Hou^{1

2}, Jiajia Mo^{1

2}, Jiongkai Chen^{1

2}, Yumin Li^{1

2}, Xu Feng⁴, Haipeng Lin⁴, Zhijiong Huang⁵, Junyu Zheng⁶, Huizhong Shen^{1

2}, Lei Zhu^{1

2}, Chen Wang^{1

2}, Jianhuai Ye^{1

2}, Xin Yang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement and Early Warning Technology for Urban Environmental Health Risks, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, China.
² Guangdong Provincial Observation and Research Station for Coastal Atmosphere and Climate of the Greater Bay Area, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, China.
³ Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, U.K.
⁴ John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, United States.
⁵ Institute for Environmental and Climate Research, Jinan University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 511443, China.
⁶ Sustainable Energy and Environment Thrust, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, Guangdong 511453, China.

Abstract

The evaporative emissions of anthropogenic volatile organic compounds (AVOCs) are sensitive to ambient temperature. This sensitivity forms an air pollution-meteorology connection that has not been assessed on a regional scale. We parametrized the temperature dependence of evaporative AVOC fluxes in a regional air quality model and evaluated the impacts on surface ozone in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) area of China during the summer of 2017. The temperature dependency of AVOC emissions drove an enhanced simulated ozone-temperature sensitivity of 1.0 to 1.8 μg m^-3 K^-1, comparable to the simulated ozone-temperature sensitivity driven by the temperature dependency of biogenic VOC emissions (1.7 to 2.4 μg m^-3 K^-1). Ozone enhancements driven by temperature-induced AVOC increases were localized to their point of emission and were relatively more important in urban areas than in rural regions. The inclusion of the temperature-dependent AVOC emissions in our model improved the simulated ozone-temperature sensitivities on days of ozone exceedance. Our results demonstrated the importance of temperature-dependent AVOC emissions on surface ozone pollution and its heretofore unrepresented role in air pollution-meteorology interactions.

Keywords: WRF-GC; air quality; anthropogenic emissions; surface ozone; volatile organic compounds.

MeSH terms

Air Pollutants* / analysis
Air Pollution*
China
Environmental Monitoring / methods
Ozone* / analysis
Temperature
Volatile Organic Compounds* / analysis

Substances

Ozone
Air Pollutants
Volatile Organic Compounds