Evaluation of some SOA formation schemes for the oxidation of anthropogenic gases against experiments in two outdoor chambers. (2016) - Vivanco, Marta Garcia
Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation remains a challenge for the air quality modelling community. Gaps in the current knowledge of certain processes involved in SOA formation and evolution, as well as the large number of uncertainties in many parameters involved, affect the accuracy of the simulation of atmospheric SOA concentrations. We present here an evaluation of several published SOA schemes by simulating experiments conducted in two outdoor chambers, EUPHORE (Ceam, Valencia, Spain) and UF (University of Florida, Gainesville, USA). The experiments focused on the oxidation of selected anthropogenic volatile organic compounds. We compare model estimates for one-step, two-step and multi-step gas-phase oxidation schemes with SOA concentrations measured in the chambers. For all schemes, some modifications were needed to obtain a better agreement between model simulations and observations.