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Air-Sea Exchange of Volatile Organic Compounds: A New Model with Microlayer Effects |
HE Cen-Lin,FU Tzung-May |
College of Urban and Environmental Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China;Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics &Laboratory for Climate and Ocean-Atmosphere Studies (LaCOAS) , Peking University, Beijing 100871, China |
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Abstract The authors propose a new “three-layer” conceptual model for the air-sea exchange of organic gases, which includes a dynamic surface microlayer with photochemical and biological processes. A parameterization of this three-layer model is presented, which was used to calculate the air-sea fluxes of acetone over the Pacific Ocean. The air-sea fluxes of acetone calculated by the three-layer model are in the same direction but possess half the magnitude of the fluxes calculated by the traditional two-layer model in the absence of photochemical and biological processes. However, photochemical and biological processes impacting acetone in the microlayer can greatly vary the calculated fluxes in the three-layer model, even reversing their direction under favorable conditions. Our model may help explain the discrepancies between measured and calculated acetone fluxes in previous studies. More measurements are needed to validate our conceptual model and provide constraints on the model parameters.
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Received: 29 June 2012
Revised: 05 September 2012
Accepted: 07 September 2012
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