Sources of Nitrous Acid in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer

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Atmospheric chemical processing drives the removal of emitted pollutants, and leads to the formation of ozone and secondary aerosol, which are harmful to human and environmental health, and contribute to climate forcing. Reaction with the OH radical is the primary driver of these oxidation processes; OH abundance must be quantitatively understood in order to accurately predict such effects. In the free troposphere, ozone photolysis is the principal net OH source (neglecting NO-driven HOx cycling); however in the boundary layer a large body of evidence shows that nitrous acid (HONO) is an important, and sometimes the dominant, net OH precursor.Well-understood gas-phase HONO chemistry is not able to explain observed levels of HONO in the boundary layer: large additional sources, forming up to an order of magnitude more HONO, are required - however their identity remains elusive. Recent laboratory work (Su et al., Science 2011; Oswald et al., Science 2013) has identified soils as a globally significant source of HONO - driven, in part, by microbial action (analogous to the well known NO, N2O production), alongside surface NO2-to-HONO conversion mechanisms - but this microbial source has not been explored in the real environment. In urban areas, there is also increasing evidence, from field and chamber studies, that vehicles dominate HONO production - yet no data on HONO production from the UK vehicle fleet exist. Past studies have attempted to constrain HONO production through steady-state approaches, applied to co-located point measurements of OH, NO and HONO. Such analyses are however potentially hampered by the very different atmospheric lifetimes of these species, which dictates that they may not be in equilibrium in complex (spatially heterogeneous) environments. There is an urgent need for robust quantification of HONO sources, in order to quantitatively predict boundary layer HONO and OH abundance, and atmospheric chemical processing affecting air quality.Within SNAABL, we will directly measure HONO production from (1) natural ground surfaces (including soil production), and (2) road traffic emissions. Our approach will focus upon real-world environmental behaviour, and will avoid the uncertainties associated with analyses of ambient HONO concentrations. (1) Natural Ground Surfaces. We will measure surface HONO fluxes from contrasting agricultural and unmanaged environments, and relate these to NOx and N2O fluxes and physical, chemical atmospheric and soil parameters. Fertiliser manipulation experiments will assess the impact of nutrient addition at a unique field location permitting simultaneous measurement of perturbed- and control systems. We will also perform laboratory studies of natural surface HONO production, using soil cores from our field sites and other UK locations. Through manipulation and selective sterilisation, we will isolate and characterise the potential abiotic and microbial HONO production mechanism(s), including surface processes. (2) Traffic Emissions. We will directly determine HONO production from traffic, through measurement of HONO, NOx and CO2 in a road tunnel, an approach which provides a single, well characterised (video monitoring) source term, and removes the confounding factors of multiple sources, dispersion and photochemistry found in the ambient atmosphere. This approach will reflect the real-world fleet emissions, rather than potentially artificial results from dynamometer driving cycles. We will use our data to parameterise the resulting HONO source terms, and assess their accuracy, and implications for boundary layer air quality, using photochemical box and regional chemistry-transport modelling. SNAABL will deliver quantitative understanding of HONO production from natural surfaces and vehicle traffic, and so substantially improve the accuracy of predictions of boundary layer atmospheric chemical processing.