Speaker: Qindan Zhu, Ph.D., Chemistry, UC Berkeley

Time: 14:00-16:00 p.m., September 26, 2023, GMT+8

Venue: Room B112, Environmental Building

Abstract:

Dr. Qindan got her PhD in UC Berkeley with Prof Ron Cohen. Her research topics include satellite observations of air pollutants and OH chemistry. She is now a NOAA climate & global change postdoc fellow working on chemistry-climate interaction.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) fuel the production of air pollutants like ozone and particulate matter (PM) through reactions with hydroxyl radicals (OH) and nitrogen oxides (NOx). The representation of VOCs chemistry remains challenging in reduced chemical mechanisms due to its complexity in speciationand reactions. We developed a new chemical mechanism, RACM2B-VCPthat is compatible with WRF-Chem that bettel represent VOCs chemistry and ozone in urban areas such as Los Angeles. We show that, the addition of cooking emission yields toa better representation of VOC reactivity and NOz budget inWRF-Chem simulation compared to the observations. We discuss how ozone changes due to each VOC emission sector andprovide insights on VOC emission control strategy for ozone regulations in both current and future scenarios. We also investigate the future ozone change over LA in the context ofzero-vehicle emission requlations.

Source: College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering