J. Hueber

Highly elevated atmospheric levels of volatile organic compounds in the Uintah Basin, Utah.

Oil and natural gas production in the Western United States has grown rapidly in recent years, and with this industrial expansion, growing environmental concerns have arisen regarding impacts on water supplies and air quality. Recent studies have revealed highly enhanced atmospheric levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from primary emissions in regions of heavy oil and gas development and associated rapid photochemical production of ozone during winter. Here, we present surface and vertical profile observations of VOC from the Uintah Basin Winter Ozone Studies conducted in January-February of 2012 and 2013. These measurements identify highly elevated levels of atmospheric alkane hydrocarbons with enhanced rates of C2-C5 nonmethane hydrocarbon (NMHC) mean mole fractions during temperature inversion events in 2013 at 200-300 times above the regional and seasonal background. Elevated atmospheric NMHC mole fractions coincided with build-up of ambient 1-h ozone to levels exceeding 150 ppbv (parts per billion by volume). The total annual mass flux of C2-C7 VOC was estimated at 194 ± 56 × 10(6) kg yr(-1), equivalent to the annual VOC emissions of a fleet of ∼100 million automobiles. Total annual fugitive emission of the aromatic compounds benzene and toluene, considered air toxics, were estimated at 1.6 ± 0.4 × 10(6) and 2.0 ± 0.5 × 10(6) kg yr(-1), respectively. These observations reveal a strong causal link between oil and gas emissions, accumulation of air toxics, and significant production of ozone in the atmospheric surface layer.

Atmosphere‐ocean ozone fluxes during the TexAQS 2006, STRATUS 2006, GOMECC 2007, GasEx 2008, and AMMA 2008 cruises

A ship-based eddy covariance ozone flux system was deployed to investigate the magnitude and variability of ozone surface fluxes over the open ocean. The flux experiments were conducted on five cruises on board the NOAA research vessel Ronald Brown during 2006-2008. The cruises covered the Gulf of Mexico, the southern as well as northern Atlantic, the Southern Ocean, and the persistent stratus cloud region off Chile in the eastern Pacific Ocean. These experiments resulted in the first ship-borne open-ocean ozone flux measurement records. The median of 10 min oceanic ozone deposition velocity (v(d)) results from a combined similar to 1700 h of observations ranged from 0.009 to 0.034 cm s(-1). For the Gulf of Mexico cruise (Texas Air Quality Study (TexAQS)) the median v(d) (interquartile range) was 0.034 (0.009-0.065) cm s(-1) (total number of 10 min measurement intervals, N-f = 1953). For the STRATUS cruise off the Chilean coast, the median v(d) was 0.009 (0.004-0.037) cm s(-1) (N-f = 1336). For the cruise from the Gulf of Mexico and up the eastern U. S. coast (Gulf of Mexico and East Coast Carbon cruise (GOMECC)) a combined value of 0.018 (0.006-0.045) cm s(-1) (N-f = 1784) was obtained (from 0.019 (-0.014-0.043) cm s(-1), N-f = 663 in the Gulf of Mexico, and 0.018 (-0.004-0.045) cm s(-1), N-f = 1121 in the North Atlantic region). The Southern Ocean Gas Exchange Experiment (GasEx) and African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA), the Southern Ocean and northeastern Atlantic cruises, respectively, resulted in median ozone v(d) of 0.009 (-0.005-0.026) cm s(-1) (N-f = 2745) and 0.020 (-0.003-0.044) cms(-1) (N-f = 1147). These directly measured ozone deposition values are at the lower end of previously reported data in the literature (0.01-0.12 cm s(-1)) for ocean water. Data illustrate a positive correlation (increase) of the oceanic ozone uptake rate with wind speed, albeit the behavior of the relationship appears to differ during these cruises. The encountered wide range of meteorological and ocean biogeochemical conditions is used to investigate fundamental drivers of oceanic O-3 deposition and for the evaluation of a recently developed global oceanic O-3 deposition modeling system.