The Emissions, Fate, and Reactivity of Atmospheric Volatile Organic Compounds
Current (Active) Projects
Chemistry at the urban/rural interface is something we look at using our PTRTOFMS along with many ancillary measurements at the NYSDEC managed EPA PAMS site at Flax Pond, our local observatory. Flax Pond Observatory has a 20 meter tower equipped with three fast air sampling lines and a sonic anemometer. In the summer of 2023 we measured the pollution from the Canadian wildfires that descended to the ground in the Long Island region, something we had not seen before. We will be continuing observations at Flax Pond in 2024 and 2025, in support of the GOTHAAM campaign. Julia Marcantonio is leading that effort.
Quantifying the impact of Biogenic and Anthropogenic Fluxes on the Atmospheric Composition of the New York City Metropolitan Area (2020-2023)
This collaborative project with Professors Roisin Commane at Columbia University and Andrew Reinman at CUNY will focus on biogenic and anthropogenic emissions in the NYC region from both forested and urban areas. We will use field and laboratory measurements to estimate fluxes of various relevant reactive VOCs from biogenic sources and follow up with modeling studies to help determine the relative importance of biogenic emissions compared to anthropogenic emissions. Field Sites include Black Rock State Forest, Central Park, and Flax Pond, Stony Brook. This project is funded by NOAA AC-4.
Wintertime Trends in VOC Speciation and Concentrations During the New York State PAUSE (2019-2021)
This collaborative project with Professor Drew Gentner at Yale focused on measurements of various VOCs from the Observatory atop the CUNY Advanced Sciences Research Center located in Harlem, NY, during the first 4 months of 2020 and 2021. Our results indicate a significant reduction in anthropogenic VOCs during the COVID-19 shutdown in New York City during Winter 2020, and a paper in preparation discusses how these observed changes may offer a glimpse into the future consisting of reduced emissions from combustion sources. This work is funded by NYSERDA via NESCAUM as well as NOAA, NSF, and the Stony Brook Foundation.
Previous studies
We participated in the 2013 SOAS Field Campaign located in Centreville and the Aquatic Biodiversity Center in Alabama. Under an EPA grant (Mak, PI; A Guenther, UCI, and A Goldstein, UCB, co-PIs), we deployed our HR-TOFPTRMS (see Laboratory Facilities) along with our AIMMS equipped research aircraft to investigate the fluxes of reactive trace gas VOCs within and above the forest canopy. We find that the chemical reactivity/lifetime is on par with the dynamic mixing of gases out of the forest canopy. We also discovered a large concentration gradient immediately above the top of the canopy. (links to pubs here). We hope to investigate the disconnect between canopy and above canopy abundances of reactive VOCs in future campaigns.
Luping Su operating the high resolution proton transfer time of flight mass spectrometer (HR-PTRTOFMS)
You can see a cockpit view of a research flight during SOAS here: