Kaiser receives NOAA Grant to Study Urban Air Quality

particulate matter, many U.S. metropolitan areas still violate the 8-hour ozone standard as regulated under the Clean Air Act. This could be a result of unanticipated trends in emissions, increasing influence of regional background sources, long-range transport, changes in atmospheric chemistry, and/or a consequence of a changing climate with heat waves in the United States becoming more frequent, longer in duration, and more intense.

To improve our understanding of emissions and chemical reactions that affect urban air quality and climate, the NOAA Chemical Sciences Laboratory is planning the Atmospheric Emissions and Reactions Observed from Megacities to Marine Areas (AEROMMA) aircraftbased field campaign to collect new observations from megacities to marine environments, currently scheduled for the summer of 2023.

Kaiser’s project will deploy the In Situ Airborne Formaldehyde (ISAF) instrument on the NOAA WP-3D aircraft during the AEROMMA field campaign, and use formaldehyde measurements to examine the emissions and fate of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in urban environments.

Formaldehyde plays a central role in atmospheric oxidation processes as both a product of VOC oxidation and a source of oxidants. AEROMMA measurement priorities include detailed VOC speciation, and formaldehyde is a key component of the VOC pool. This study will enhance researchers’ ability to predict air quality now and in the future as a function of increasing urbanization and rising temperatures.