Journal Article
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114, iss. 48, pp. 12685-12690, 2017
Authors
Jialei Zhu, Joyce E. Penner, Guangxing Lin, Cheng Zhou, Li Xu, Bingliang Zhuang
Abstract
Significance
Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) forms via a variety of processes and plays a key role in climate change and air quality. Recent measurements indicate that most SOA exists as an internal mixture with other aerosols. This study examines the radiative effect of using a mixing state for SOA that depends on the process of formation, based on an explicit mechanism for the chemical production of SOA. The radiative forcing of SOA in the future is estimated using this approach. A surprising result is that the contribution of SOA to radiative forcing increases substantially (becomes more negative) in the future even though the increase of its burden is slight.
