Environmental Science and Engineering Seminar

Reactive organic carbon is ubiquitous in Earth's atmosphere, and impacts the formation of ozone and secondary organic aerosol. Despite its importance, the sources and sinks of reactive organic carbon are poorly understood. A couple of decades into thinking about what drives surface-atmosphere exchange, I find myself constantly quoting Alice as the observations of organic carbon fluxes become curiouser and curiouser. In this talk, we will use those observations to investigate the drivers of surface-atmosphere exchange. While the biosphere is well-established to be a substantial source of hydrocarbons, forests can also take up atmospheric organic carbon, particularly when wildfire smoke is present. We use observational data from a combined leaf- and tower-level flux study over a ponderosa pine forest in Colorado (the Fluxes of Carbon Study, FluCS) to investigate these trends and processes. We will then compare processes controlling biosphere-atmosphere exchange to those controlling building-atmosphere exchange using studies from homes (the House Observations of Microbial and Environmental, or HOMEChem, and Chemical Assessment of Surfaces and Air, or CASA, studies). The process of smoke uptake by buildings and leaves provide some striking similarities. Finally, we will consider implications of building emissions to the urban atmosphere using recent measurements taken over Minneola, New York in the Fluxes of Reactive Organic Gases (FROG-NY) study.