Impact of HO2 aerosol uptake on radical levels and O3 production during summertime in Beijing

Joanna E. Dyson, Lisa K. Whalley*, Eloise J. Slater, Robert Woodward-Massey, Chunxiang Ye, James D. Lee, Freya Squires, James R. Hopkins, Rachel E. Dunmore, Marvin Shaw, Jacqueline F. Hamilton, Alastair C. Lewis, Stephen D. Worrall, Asan Bacak, Archit Mehra, Thomas J. Bannan, Hugh Coe, Carl J. Percival, Bin Ouyang, C. Nicholas HewittRoderic L. Jones, Leigh R. Crilley, Louisa J. Kramer, W. Joe F. Acton, William J. Bloss, Supattarachai Saksakulkrai, Jingsha Xu, Zongbo Shi, Simone Kotthaus, Sue Grimmond, Yele Sun, Weiqi Xu, Siyao Yue, Lianfang Wei, Pingqing Fu, Xinming Wang, Stephen R. Arnold, Dwayne E. Heard*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The impact of heterogeneous uptake of HO2 on aerosol surfaces on radical concentrations and the O3 production regime in Beijing in summertime was investigated. The uptake coefficient of HO2 onto aerosol surfaces, δ3HO2, was calculated for the AIRPRO campaign in Beijing, in summer 2017, as a function of measured aerosol soluble copper concentration, [Cu2+]eff, aerosol liquid water content, [ALWC], and particulate matter concentration, [PM]. An average δ3HO2 across the entire campaign of 0.070±0.035 was calculated, with values ranging from 0.002 to 0.15, and found to be significantly lower than the value of δ3HO2=0.2, commonly used in modelling studies. Using the calculated δ3HO2 values for the summer AIRPRO campaign, OH, HO2 and RO2 radical concentrations were modelled using a box model incorporating the Master Chemical Mechanism (v3.3.1), with and without the addition of δ3HO2, and compared to the measured radical concentrations. The rate of destruction analysis showed the dominant HO2 loss pathway to be HO2+NO for all NO concentrations across the summer Beijing campaign, with HO2 uptake contributing <0.3% to the total loss of HO2 on average. This result for Beijing summertime would suggest that under most conditions encountered, HO2 uptake onto aerosol surfaces is not important to consider when investigating increasing O3 production with decreasing [PM] across the North China Plain. At low [NO], however, i.e. <0.1ppb, which was often encountered in the afternoons, up to 29% of modelled HO2 loss was due to HO2 uptake on aerosols when calculated δ3HO2 was included, even with the much lower δ3HO2 values compared to δ3HO2= 0.2, a result which agrees with the aerosol-inhibited O3 regime recently proposed by Ivatt et al. (2022). As such it can be concluded that in cleaner environments, away from polluted urban centres where HO2 loss chemistry is not dominated by NO but where aerosol surface area is high still, changes in PM concentration and hence aerosol surface area could still have a significant effect on both overall HO2 concentration and the O3 production regime. Using modelled radical concentrations, the absolute O3 sensitivity to NOx and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) showed that, on average across the summer AIRPRO campaign, the O3 production regime remained VOC-limited, with the exception of a few days in the afternoon when the NO mixing ratio dropped low enough for the O3 regime to shift towards being NOx-limited. The O3 sensitivity to VOCs, the dominant regime during the summer AIRPRO campaign, was observed to decrease and shift towards a NOx-sensitive regime both when NO mixing ratio decreased and with the addition of aerosol uptake. This suggests that if [NOx] continues to decrease in the future, ozone reduction policies focussing solely on NOx reductions may not be as efficient as expected if [PM] and, hence, HO2 uptake to aerosol surfaces continue to decrease. The addition of aerosol uptake into the model, for both the δ3HO2 calculated from measured data and when using a fixed value of δ3HO2=0.2, did not have a significant effect on the overall O3 production regime across the campaign. While not important for this campaign, aerosol uptake could be important for areas of lower NO concentration that are already in a NOx-sensitive regime.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)5679-5697
Number of pages19
JournalAtmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Volume23
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 May 2023

Bibliographical note

© Author(s) 2023.

Funding Information:
This research has been supported by the UK Research and Innovation (SPHERES PhD Studentship and grant no. NE/S006680/1).

Funding Information:
Joanna Dyson, Eloise Slater, Robert Woodward-Massey, Freya Squires and Archit Mehra acknowledge NERC SPHERES PhD studentships. We would like to thank Likun Xue and co-authors for providing the chlorine chemistry module used in the MCM. We acknowledge the support from Zifa Wang and Jie Li from the Institute of Applied Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, for hosting the APHH-Beijing campaign. We thank Liangfang Wei, Hong Ren, Qiaorong Xie, Wanyu Zhao, Linjie Li, Ping Li, Shengjie Hou and Qingqing Wang from IAP, Kebin He and Xiaoting Cheng from Tsinghua University, and James Allan from the University of Manchester for providing logistic and scientific support for the field campaigns and Tuan Vu from Imperial College London for providing supervision and supporting data. We would also like to thank other participants in the APHH field campaign.

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