Carbon oxidation state as a metric for describing the chemistry of atmospheric organic aerosol.
A detailed understanding of the sources, transformations and fates of organic species in the environment is crucial because of the central roles that they play in human health, biogeochemical cycles and the Earth's climate. However, such an understanding is hindered by the immense chemical complexity of environmental mixtures of organics; for example, atmospheric organic aerosol consists of at least thousands of individual compounds, all of which likely evolve chemically over their atmospheric lifetimes. Here, we demonstrate the utility of describing organic aerosol (and other complex organic mixtures) in terms of average carbon oxidation state, a quantity that always increases with oxidation, and is readily measured using state-of-the-art analytical techniques. Field and laboratory measurements of the average carbon oxidation state, using several such techniques, constrain the chemical properties of the organics and demonstrate that the formation and evolution of organic aerosol involves simultaneous changes to both carbon oxidation state and carbon number.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA. jhkroll@mit.edu
Jesse H
JH
Kroll
Neil M
NM
Donahue
Jose L
JL
Jimenez
Sean H
SH
Kessler
Manjula R
MR
Canagaratna
Kevin R
KR
Wilson
Katye E
KE
Altieri
Lynn R
LR
Mazzoleni
Andrew S
AS
Wozniak
Hendrik
H
Bluhm
Erin R
ER
Mysak
Jared D
JD
Smith
Charles E
CE
Kolb
Douglas R
DR
Worsnop
D000336:Aerosols / Q000737:chemistry*; D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000737:chemistry; D001272:Atmosphere / Q000737:chemistry*; D002244:Carbon / Q000737:chemistry*; D006801:Humans; D009930:Organic Chemicals / Q000737:chemistry*; D010084:Oxidation-Reduction
D000336:Aerosols; D000393:Air Pollutants; D009930:Organic Chemicals; D002244:Carbon
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