Special Issue "Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) Emissions: Monitoring and Assessment"
A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Atmospheric Techniques, Instruments, and Modeling".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 7 July 2023 | Viewed by 5089
Special Issue Editors

Interests: analytical atmospheric chemistry; mass spectrometry; volatile organic compounds (VOCs); laboratory and field experiments; air quality
Interests: biosphere–atmosphere interactions; volatile organic compounds (VOCs); mass spectrometry; eddy covariance flux measurements; atmospheric chemistry
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The aim of this Special Issue is to gather papers focusing on recent advancements in the field of volatile organic compound (VOC) measurements, modeling, and their impact on air quality, climate, and atmospheric chemistry. VOCs play an important role in tropospheric ozone (O3) and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation. Tropospheric O3 can be harmful as it has an impact on air quality due to its ability to form photochemical smog and has a direct health impact as a pulmonary irritant. In addition to this, O3 enters leaves through plant stomata during normal gas exchange in the daylight hours and impairs plant metabolism and damages crops. On the other hand, SOA has a direct climate impact through the radiative forcing of the atmosphere and contributes to the cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) formation. Therefore, it is extremely important to quantify VOCs in different atmospheric environments and from various emission sources. Monitoring and assessment of VOCs is, therefore, becoming exceedingly important for air pollution mitigation strategies.
Topics of interest for this Special issue will include but are not limited to:
- Atmospheric chemistry of volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
- Analytical techniques for atmospheric measurements
- Laboratory and field experiments
- Eddy covariance flux measurements
- Biosphere–atmosphere interactions
- Atmospheric models and satellite remote
- Health impact of VOCs
Dr. Chinmoy Sarkar
Dr. Roger Seco
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- volatile organic compounds
- analytical techniques
- atmospheric chemistry
- numerical modeling
- biosphere–atmosphere interactions
- satellite remote sensing
- laboratory and field experiments
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Title: The Distribution of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) over the Southern Ocean
Authors: Saewung Kim, Roger Seco, Daun Jeong, Chinmoy Sakar, Sanjeevi Nagaligam, Alex Guenther, Kitae Kim, and Keyhong Park
Tentative Abstract: The marine volatile organic compounds (VOC) distributions are significantly understudied. The limited existing studies have consistently illustrated unknown sources, both biotic and abiotic origins. We present shipborne VOC measurements on I/B Araon a South Korean icebreaker, during the Southern Ocean research cruise. The cruise departed from Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2018 to conduct underway VOC observations, including Ross Sea, Amundsen Sea, and the Antarctic Peninsula coast using the proton transfer reaction-time of flight-mass spectrometer system. It includes both open water and sea ice areas. This study mainly presents dimethyl sulfide (DMS), isoprene, acetone, acetaldehyde, and methanol. Their correlations with each other and other oceanographic parameters illustrate whether the compounds are mainly from biotic or abiotic sources. The dataset from the most remote marine boundary layer on the Earth illustrates the complexity of the source profiles of these VOC compounds. We expect that the presented analysis will facilitate better parameterization of marine VOC emissions in the chemical transport models, thus eventual improvements in constraining oxidation capacity over the pristine marine boundary layer covering the majority of the Earth’s surface.
Authors: Keyhong Park, Blanca Rodriguez, Jerry Thomas, Dasa Gu, Doshik Hahm, Intae Kim, Miming Zhang, Alex Guenther, Chinmoy Sarkar, and Saewung Kim
Abstract: We present reactive VOC observations over the North Pacific and the Arctic Sea from airborne and shipborne measurements. We particularly investigate distributions of biogenic volatile organic compounds that may be emitted from phytoplankton. In contrast to the terrestrial observations, isoprene (C5H8), the most dominant BVOC emission from the terrestrial ecosystem, was mostly present under the lower detection limit along with monoterpenes (C10H16), the second largest emission from the terrestrial ecosystem. However, we have consistently detected sesquiterpenes (C15H24) over the Arctic Sea for the two Arctic cruises. Analysis results of sorbent cartridge samplings conducted over the Arctic Sea on Korean icebreaker R/V Araon in 2016 and 2017 illustrate that few tens ppt levels of sesquiterpenes were present over the Arctic Sea. Moreover, the concentration variation is positively correlated with the quantitative indicators of ocean biological activities such as chlorophyll-a, dissolved DMS, and the ratio of dissolved O2 and Ar. This analysis suggests that further investigations on the emission and atmospheric transformation processes of sesquiterpene over the marine boundary layer are required.