• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Direct Constraints on Secondary HONO Production in Aged Wildfire Smoke From Airborne Measurements Over the Western US
  • Contributor: Peng, Qiaoyun; Palm, Brett B.; Fredrickson, Carley D.; Lee, Ben H.; Hall, Samuel R.; Ullmann, Kirk; Weinheimer, Andrew J.; Levin, Ezra; DeMott, Paul; Garofalo, Lauren A.; Pothier, Matson A.; Farmer, Delphine K.; Fischer, Emily V.; Thornton, Joel A.
  • imprint: American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2022
  • Published in: Geophysical Research Letters
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1029/2022gl098704
  • ISSN: 0094-8276; 1944-8007
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: <jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Nitrous acid (HONO) mixing ratios measured in aged wildfire smoke plumes were higher than expected from known homogeneous chemical reactions. In a representative smoke plume, intercepted hours to days downwind of the source, the missing HONO source was highly correlated to particulate nitrate photolysis and NO<jats:sub>2</jats:sub> reactive uptake to particles. Using a multilinear regression involving these two sources, we could explain the missing HONO production in this plume (<jats:italic>R</jats:italic><jats:sup>2</jats:sup> = 0.77). The resulting fit parameters from this plume had good explanatory power (<jats:italic>R</jats:italic><jats:sup>2</jats:sup> = 0.64) for missing HONO production in other fire plumes. The mean enhancement factor for particulate nitrate photolysis relative to gas‐phase nitric acid photolysis was 63 and the mean NO<jats:sub>2</jats:sub> reactive uptake coefficient to submicron aerosol surface area forming HONO was 4.9 × 10<jats:sup>−4</jats:sup>. Given the likelihood of other neglected secondary HONO sources, these values are upper‐limits, suggesting a need to revisit HONO formation mechanisms in aged wildfire smoke.</jats:p>