Atmospheric chemistry articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Polysulfur compounds have been ascribed as the unknown near-UV absorbers in Venusian atmosphere and play a key role in the sulfur chemical cycle of this planet. Here, authors establish their production from (SO)2 on the grounds of quantifications of photochemical and thermal pathways involved in the sulfur chemical cycle of the planet.

    • Antonio Francés-Monerris
    • , Javier Carmona-García
    •  & Daniel Roca-Sanjuán

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The evolution of the Amazon forest is tightly coupled to its terrestrial water balance. Here, the authors show that forest biomass changes in the Amazon are a driver of the spatiotemporal variation of evapotranspiration, and such changes could have a larger impact on water availability in the dry regions (southern, eastern) of the Amazon.

    • Mingjie Shi
    • , John R. Worden
    •  & Joshua B. Fisher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Growing emissions from Pacific Northwest wildfires have increased atmospheric carbon monoxide in August, raising questions about potential health impacts as the seasonal pattern of air quality changes for large regions of North America.

    • Rebecca R. Buchholz
    • , Mijeong Park
    •  & Sheryl Magzamen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The reactive uptake of N2O5 to aqueous aerosol is a major loss channel for nitrogen oxides in the troposphere. Here authors report a theoretical investigation on the N2O5 uptake into aqueous aerosol and determine the hydrolysis rates by numerically solving a molecularly detailed reaction–diffusion equation.

    • Vinícius Wilian D. Cruzeiro
    • , Mirza Galib
    •  & Andreas W. Götz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The co-evolution of oxygenation of the Earth’s atmosphere and lithosphere is still poorly constrained. However, the oxidation state of manganese minerals reveals that the redox state of Earth’s crust responds to changes in atmospheric oxygen following a ~66 million-year time lag.

    • Daniel R. Hummer
    • , Joshua J. Golden
    •  & Robert M. Hazen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pyruvic acid and its conjugate base, the pyruvate anion, are largely present in the atmosphere. Here the authors, using photoelectron imaging and quantum chemistry calculations, investigate the photochemistry of isolated pyruvate anions initiated by UVA radiation and report the formation of CO2, CO, and CH3− further decomposing into CH3 and a free electron.

    • Connor J. Clarke
    • , Jemma A. Gibbard
    •  & Basile F. E. Curchod

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pluto’s haze is revealed to have two types of particles: small spherical organic haze particles and micron-size fluffy aggregates. The persistence of these two populations has important implications for haze formation and properties on icy worlds.

    • Siteng Fan
    • , Peter Gao
    •  & Yuk L. Yung

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fine particle air pollution causes premature death, but the role of different fine particle components in mortality is not well characterized. Here, the authors show the secondary organic aerosol component of fine particle mass is associated with significant cardiorespiratory mortality in the U.S.

    • Havala O. T. Pye
    • , Cavin K. Ward-Caviness
    •  & Karl M. Seltzer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Strong thunderstorms can reach the lower stratosphere and produce cloud-top blue emissions, affecting the exchange of greenhouse gases between the troposphere and stratosphere. Here, the authors reveal the direct link of blue emissions with the radio signals of one sort of intra-cloud discharges called NBEs.

    • Feifan Liu
    • , Gaopeng Lu
    •  & Baoyou Zhu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ammonia emissions from agricultural sources can cause severe health impacts. Here, the authors show that about 25% of global agricultural ammonia emissions in 2012 were related to international exported goods and caused 61 thousand PM2.5 related premature deaths, which points out large ammonia mitigation potential in international trade.

    • Rong Ma
    • , Ke Li
    •  & Jing Meng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Biomass burning emissions have been shown to influence clouds in the Atlantic, but its influence in other regions is not well known. Here, the authors show that biomass burning aerosols increase the low-cloud cover over subtropical southeastern Asia by a similar magnitude than over the Atlantic.

    • Ke Ding
    • , Xin Huang
    •  & Meinrat O. Andreae

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Antarctic ozone hole has had far-reaching impacts, but effects on geochemical cycles in polar regions is still unknown. Iodine records from the interior of Antarctica provide evidence for human alteration of the natural geochemical cycle of this essential element.

    • Andrea Spolaor
    • , François Burgay
    •  & Alfonso Saiz-Lopez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Vegetation emits organic vapors which can form aerosols in the atmosphere and influence cloud properties. Here, the authors show observational evidence that warmer temperatures lead to increased emissions of these aerosols in boreal forests which cause surface cooling, demonstrating a negative climate feedback mechanism.

    • Taina Yli-Juuti
    • , Tero Mielonen
    •  & Annele Virtanen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sea spray aerosol (SSA) are an important way through which oceans can influence the atmosphere’s radiative properties. Here, the authors present measurements taken over a 42,000 km ship cruise in the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean and show that SSA number concentrations vary over a 24-hour cycle, possibly linked to surface water bubble-bursting dynamics.

    • J. Michel Flores
    • , Guillaume Bourdin
    •  & Ilan Koren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nowhere is biomass burning more abundant than on the African continent, but the biogeochemical impacts on forests are poorly understood. Here the authors show that biomass burning leads to high phosphorus deposition in the Congo basin, which scales with forest age as a result of increasing canopy complexity.

    • Marijn Bauters
    • , Travis W. Drake
    •  & Pascal Boeckx

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How climate change influences the lifecycle of stratospheric volcanic aerosols and the associated radiative forcing is unknown. Here, the authors present model experiments suggesting that climate change amplifies the forcing of large-magnitude tropical eruptions but reduces the forcing of moderate-magnitude tropical eruptions.

    • Thomas J. Aubry
    • , John Staunton-Sykes
    •  & Anja Schmidt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Despite a ban on ozone depleting substances, ozone depletion during cold winters in the Arctic stratosphere has been increasing in recent decades. Here, the authors show conditions favourable for Arctic ozone depletion could worsen as a response of stratospheric temperature and water to continued release of greenhouse gases.

    • Peter von der Gathen
    • , Rigel Kivi
    •  & Markus Rex

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) was phased-out under the Montreal, but renewed emissions of CFC-11 have been reported recently. Here, the authors present a joint analysis of multiple factors and find that emissions of CFC-11, but also CFC-12 and CFC-113 are higher than expected, indicating renewed emissions.

    • Megan Lickley
    • , Sarah Fletcher
    •  & Susan Solomon

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sunlight can change the composition of atmospheric aerosol particles, but the mechanisms through which this happens are not well known. Here, the authors show that fast radical reaction and slow diffusion near viscous organic particle surfaces can cause oxygen depletion, radical trapping and humidity dependent oxidation.

    • Peter A. Alpert
    • , Jing Dou
    •  & Markus Ammann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Oxidation of volatile organic compounds leads to aerosol formation in the atmosphere, but the mechanism of some fast reactions is still unclear. The authors, using quantum chemical modelling and experiments, reveal that in key monoterpenes the cyclobutyl ring that would hinder the reactivity is broken in the early exothermic steps of the reaction.

    • Siddharth Iyer
    • , Matti P. Rissanen
    •  & Theo Kurtén

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The regulation of aircraft engine NOx emissions was introduced to improve local air quality and reduce NOx emissions at altitude. Here, the authors find that greater fuel efficiency of aircrafts, and therefore lower CO2 emissions, could be preferable to reducing NOx emissions in terms of the aviation industries future climate impacts.

    • Agnieszka Skowron
    • , David S. Lee
    •  & Bethan Owen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wildfires produce aerosols known to impact the climate, but the wider-reaching effects of this biomass burning are poorly constrained in models. Here the authors use a suite of observations from 12 campaigns around the globe to determine that the values used by most climate models overestimate the contribution of biomass burning aerosols.

    • Hunter Brown
    • , Xiaohong Liu
    •  & Duli Chand

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In the habitable zone concept, a planet’s carbon dioxide-water greenhouse maintains surface liquid water. Here, the authors estimate how many Earthlike exoplanets are needed to detect a relationship between stellar flux and the atmospheric carbon dioxide predicted by carbon cycle modeling.

    • Owen R. Lehmer
    • , David C. Catling
    •  & Joshua Krissansen-Totton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ice nucleating particles impact the global climate by altering cloud formation and properties, but the sources of these emissions are not completely characterized. Here, the authors show that secondary organic aerosols formed from the oxidation of organic gases in the atmosphere can be a source of ice nucleating particles.

    • Martin J. Wolf
    • , Yue Zhang
    •  & Daniel J. Cziczo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Which vapors are responsible for new particle formation in the Arctic is largely unknown. Here, the authors show that the formation of new particles at the central Arctic Ocean is mainly driven by iodic acid and that particles smaller than 30 nm in diameter can activate as cloud condensation nuclei.

    • Andrea Baccarini
    • , Linn Karlsson
    •  & Julia Schmale

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The methane emissions from natural gas vehicles (NGVs) are unclear. Here the authors report high methane emissions from heavy-duty NGVs, and by using a scenario analysis show that strictly implementing the upcoming China VI standard could reduce GHG emissions by 509 Mt CO2eq for 2020-2030.

    • Da Pan
    • , Lei Tao
    •  & Mark A. Zondlo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    “How iodine-bearing molecules contribute to atmospheric aerosol formation is not well understood. Here, the authors provide a new gas-to-particle conversion mechanism and show that clustering of iodine oxides is an essential component of this process while previously proposed iodic acid does not play a large role.”

    • Juan Carlos Gómez Martín
    • , Thomas R. Lewis
    •  & Alfonso Saiz-Lopez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Selective reduction of carbon dioxide to high-value products is key for advancing carbon capture and utilization technologies. Here the authors prepare a copper catalyst for electrocatalytic conversion of carbon dioxide to C2+ products with enhanced selectivity that is attributed to a high density of surface defects.

    • Taehee Kim
    •  & G. Tayhas R. Palmore

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A cloud of enhanced ruthenium concentrations has been observed over Europe in 2017, but no country has acknowledged responsibility for this nuclear release. Here, the authors show that the stable isotopic composition of ruthenium emitted from nuclear fuel reprocessing during the 2017 event is consistent with the isotopic signature of civilian Russian nuclear reactor fuel.

    • Timo Hopp
    • , Dorian Zok
    •  & Georg Steinhauser

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How sulfur dioxide emitted through coal combustion is oxidized to sulfate particles during winter haze pollution events has been the subject of debate. Here, the authors show that rapid oxidation takes place by nitrogen dioxide and nitrous acid, producing nitrous oxide together with sulfate.

    • Junfeng Wang
    • , Jingyi Li
    •  & Daniel J. Jacob

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Following international agreements, the use of chlorofluorocarbons in production is supposed to be phased out. Here, the authors present a new estimate of these products already in use and their emissions and show that they are larger than expected and that not recovering these banks leads to a substantial delay in the polar ozone hole recovery.

    • Megan Lickley
    • , Susan Solomon
    •  & Kane Stone

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Middle East is known to emit large amounts of non-methane hydrocarbon pollutants to the atmosphere, but the sources are poorly characterized. Here the authors discover a new source—deep water in the Red Sea—and calculate that its emissions exceed rates of several high gas-production countries.

    • E. Bourtsoukidis
    • , A. Pozzer
    •  & J. Williams

  • Article
    | Open Access

    International agreements have been implemented to reduce emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) to reduce their radiative forcing. Even though reported HFC-23 emissions are at a historical low, observations indicate that emissions have actually increased over recent years to higher levels than previously.

    • K. M. Stanley
    • , D. Say
    •  & M. Rigby

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The Antarctic ozone hole is decreasing in size due to policies implemented following the Montreal Protocol. Here, model simulations show that if recently discovered increase in unreported CFC-11 emissions continue, they could delay the recovery of the ozone hole by well over a decade.

    • S. S. Dhomse
    • , W. Feng
    •  & M. P. Chipperfield

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Aerosol-cloud interactions are a large source of uncertainty in radiative forcing estimates. Here, the authors show that the radiative effects of clouds are influenced by a combination of aerosol particle distribution, environmental conditions and atmosphere dynamics.

    • S. J. Lowe
    • , D. G. Partridge
    •  & I. Riipinen

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