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Download or read book Study of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) in the Cloudy Atmosphere written by Miao Wang and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC), including saturated, unsaturated, and other substituted hydrocarbons, play a major role in atmospheric chemistry. They are primarily emitted by anthropogenic and biogenic sources into the atmosphere; they are also transformed in situ by chemical reactions, and more specifically, by photo-oxidation leading to the formation of ozone (O3) and Secondary Organic Aerosol (SOA). By altering the organic fraction of aerosol particles, VOC modify the Earth's radiative balance through a direct effect (absorption and scattering of solar radiation) or through indirect effect by altering cloud microphysical properties. They also present a direct effect on human health and on the environment.During their atmospheric transport, VOC and their oxidation products, Oxygenated Volatile Organic Compounds (OVOC), may partition between the gaseous and aqueous phases depending on their solubility. Clouds have a significant effect on tropospheric chemistry by redistributing trace constituents between phases and by providing liquid water in which aqueous phase chemistry can take place. Indeed, during the cloud lifetime, chemical compounds and particularly VOC are efficiently transformed since clouds favor the development of complex “multiphase chemistry”. The latter presents several particularities. First, photochemical processes inside the droplets are important in the transformation of chemical compounds. Second, aqueous chemical reactions are efficient and can be faster than the equivalent reactions in the gas phase. This can be related to the presence of strong oxidants such as hydrogen peroxide H2O2 or Transition Metal Ions (TMI), which participate in the formation of radicals such as hydroxyl radicals (HO•) that favor oxidation processes. Furthermore, the presence of viable microorganisms has been highlighted and shown to participate in transformations of the chemical species. Finally, these transformations in clouds are also strongly perturbed by microphysical processes that control formation, lifetime and dissipation of clouds. These processes will redistribute the chemical species between the different reservoirs (cloud water, rain, particle phase, gaseous phase, and solid ice phase). In this frame, the transformation of VOC in the cloud medium can lead to the production of secondary compounds contributing to SOA formation, reported as “cloud aqSOA”. This secondary organic aerosol mass produced during the cloud lifetime could explain in part the ubiquity of small dicarboxylic and keto acids and high molecular-weight compounds measured in aerosol particles, fog water, cloud water, or rainwater at many locations, as they have neither substantial direct emission sources nor any identified important source in the gas phase. This aqSOA mass stays in the particle phase after cloud evaporation implying a modification of the (micro)physical and chemical properties of aerosol particles (particle size, chemical composition, morphology). This leads to modifications of their impacts on consecutive cloud or fog cycles (aerosol indirect effects) and of their interactions with incoming radiation by scattering/absorbing (aerosol direct effect). (...).