RAPID: Emissions and Fate of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) Emitted from Australian Wildfires during the COALA-JOEYS Campaign

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This RAPID project takes advantage of the ongoing participation of a US investigator in an Australian campaign to study the vegetative emissions of atmospheric compounds in pristine and in polluted conditions in New South Wales Australia, enabling the investigator to extend these efforts to study the emissions from the massive wildfires now occurring in that region. The data from this project will be evaluated in comparison to wildfire studies in the US, and help to develop a better understanding of how the chemical composition of wildfire emissions vary depending on the material burned. The results have immediate relevance to the general public, as large populations are currently being exposed to Australian bushfire smoke with unknown chemical composition.The COALA-JOEY’s (Characterizing Organics and Aerosol Loading over Australia - Joint Organic Emissions Year-round Study) campaign in Australia will be extended to focus on emissions from ongoing Australian wildfires. Samples will be obtained in the plumes of smoke from the fires using a proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass spectrometer to identify volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including intermediate oxidation products and semivolatile VOCs. This data is expected to help resolve some of the large uncertainties in the formation of oxidized VOCs in fire plumes. In particular, the emissions of fire-related formic acid (HCOOH) are especially uncertain in Australian fires. Atmospheric HCOOH contributes to precipitation acidity and chemistry, and its sources are generally not well captured in global models. Constraining primary emissions of HCOOH and investigating secondary formation mechanisms will provide a valuable constraint on global HCOOH budgets as well as on the ultimate fate of biomass burning emissions. This project will advance the knowledge of VOC emissions from Australian wildfires, their variability and dependencies, and subsequent VOC oxidation.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.