Seminar

Abstract

The NASA Atmospheric Tomography Mission (ATom) is a field program that investigates the impact of human emissions on air quality and climate in remote regions of the atmosphere. Measurements from the NASA DC-8 aircraft during the ATom profiled the atmosphere over the remote Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, from 0.2 km up to 13 km altitude and nearly from pole to pole. The newly developed NOAA iodide ion time-of-flight chemical ionization mass spectrometer was field deployed for the first time aboard the NASA DC-8 for ATom flights in October 2017 and May 2018. This presentation will focus on new observations of a previously undetected organic sulfur species, vinylsulfonic acid (VSA, C2H4O3S). The chemical nature of VSA explains how this compound was previously undetected. These observations suggest the existence of an additional and potentially important marine sulfur cycle that is distinctly separate from the well-known DMS oxidation scheme. The VSA sulfur cycle likely plays a pivotal role in the abundance of particulate sulfur in the marine boundary layer. During this talk, the potential sources and fates of this unique molecule will be discussed. Validation of these observations, e.g. the unambiguous identification of VSA, presents many analytical challenges that required the development of new and novel analytical methods and standard generations technique. Laboratory and field deployment of these methods will be described, and application to this data set and future studies will be discussed.

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Patrick Veres is a scientist at NOAA ESRL CSD in the Tropospheric Chemistry group. His research focuses on the development and application of mass spectrometry to measure trace species. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado, working with Jim Roberts and Joost de Gouw, and then completed a post-doc at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. He has co-authored over 60 papers in atmospheric chemistry.