Issue 9, 2023

Case study evaluation of size-resolved molecular composition and phase state of carbonaceous particles in wildfire influenced smoke from the Pacific Northwest

Abstract

Wildfires are significant sources of carbonaceous particles in the atmosphere. Given the dependence of atmospheric processes on particle physical and molecular properties, the interplay between particle size, phase state and chemical composition is investigated here for aerosol influenced by a 2021 Pacific Northwest wildfire event. Both micro-spectroscopy and high resolution mass spectrometry analyses highlight a similarity in particle compositions independent of both particle size (0.1–0.32 μm particle diameters) and day/night cycle influences. Microscopy techniques revealed similar phase states for periods of both day and night, with increases in liquid-like character for smaller particles. Finally, we apply an evaporation kinetics model on estimated volatility distributions from assigned molecular formulae, similarly revealing a slight increase in liquid-like character for smaller particles with no significant day/night dependency. While the observations here are limited to a case study, the lack of influence from the day/night cycle on chemical composition and phase state of particles in a wildfire influenced plume is of particular note given that dependences are otherwise commonly observed for different environments/sources. This observation, combined with the lack of compositional dependencies for size-resolved wildfire-influenced particles, may have substantial implications for wildfire particle optical properties, transport, and atmospheric models.

Graphical abstract: Case study evaluation of size-resolved molecular composition and phase state of carbonaceous particles in wildfire influenced smoke from the Pacific Northwest

Supplementary files

Transparent peer review

To support increased transparency, we offer authors the option to publish the peer review history alongside their article.

View this article’s peer review history

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
20 Apr. 2023
Accepted
28 Jūl. 2023
First published
09 Aug. 2023
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Environ. Sci.: Atmos., 2023,3, 1251-1261

Case study evaluation of size-resolved molecular composition and phase state of carbonaceous particles in wildfire influenced smoke from the Pacific Northwest

G. W. Vandergrift, N. N. Lata, S. Mathai, A. Ijaz, Z. Cheng, M. Shrivastava, J. Zhang, A. S. Md Shawon, G. Kulkarni, L. R. Mazzoleni, W. Kew and S. China, Environ. Sci.: Atmos., 2023, 3, 1251 DOI: 10.1039/D3EA00058C

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements