Chemical Composition and Aging of Organic Aerosol and Impacts on Physical and Chemical Aerosol Properties

Dear Colleagues,

Considerable effort has gone into studying the chemical composition and volatility of organic aerosol, in particular that formed by gas-to-particle conversion (secondary organic aerosol, SOA). Composition and volatility directly affect the particles’ physicochemical properties (e.g., activation into cloud droplets, or health effects), as well as the transport and fate of organic compounds in the atmosphere (e.g., oxidative processing, or evaporation upon dilution or warming).

Multiple processes are at play in forming SOA particles and in subsequently transforming their composition (“aging”): the oxidative processing of organic precursor vapors, condensation or reactive uptake into the particle phase, and subsequent heterogeneous and particle-phase chemistry. However, and especially when investigating the actual atmosphere, these processes may be difficult to decouple, and the involved organic chemistry is extremely complex. Therefore, many open questions regarding these chemistries remain. For example, a substantial fraction of atmospheric SOA appears to be composed of oligomers, i.e., the covalently bound products of accretion reactions. However, this accretion chemistry (e.g., formation timescales, reversibility, product stabilities) has remained poorly constrained; yet it also connects to our ability to interpret measurements of (multiphase) SOA composition and volatility.

In this Special Issue, we welcome manuscripts that investigate the chemical composition of organic aerosol or the impact of composition on aerosol properties, and we especially welcome works focusing on particle aging processes.

Studies may be based on laboratory experiments, ambient observations, or modeling results. We also warmly welcome manuscripts that summarize published findings, in particular when exploring what can be inferred regarding processes occurring in ambient SOA—e.g., what the results of lab experiments (on well-controlled but simplified systems) and of model simulations (in particular process models), constrained by ambient observations (though handicapped by complexity), can tell us about the composition of atmospheric SOA, its temporal evolution (e.g., via accretion chemistry), and consequent particle properties.

Dr. Siegfried Schobesberger
Guest Editor

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• Secondary organic aerosol
• Atmospheric organic aerosol chemistry
• Multiphase chemistry
• Accretion chemistry
• Ambient observations
• Organic aerosol physical properties
• Kinetic studies
• Mechanistic studies