Biomass burning as a source of formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, methanol, acetone, acetonitrile, and hydrogen cyanide

Authors: Rupert Holzinger, C. Warneke, Armin Hansel, Alfons Jordan, W. Lindinger, D. Scharffe, Gunnar W. Schade, Paul J. Crutzen - Geophysical Research Letters 1999 cited by 389

Using a novel experimental technique, based on proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry, from measurements of emissions from laboratory scale biomass burning experiments, we have estimated the source strengths of several potential HO x producing gases: formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, methanol and acetone. The derived global average emissions are 5–13; 3.8–10; 1.5‐4; 2.3‐6.1 Tg y −1 , respectively. The resulting global average HO x production from photochemical decay of these gases is 3 × 10 9 molecules cm −2 s −1 . Although relatively small in a global context, these emissions are significant for the photochemistry in fresh fire plumes. From our measurements are also estimated global source strengths from biomass burning for CH 3 CN and HCN of 0.4‐1.0; 0.2‐0.6 Tg y −1 respectively. The biomass burning emissions of CH 3 CN may well dominate the global source of this compound, which thus might well be a unique tracer for biomass burning. Some discrepancies between experimental studies must, however, be resolved.