EGU21-8643, updated on 11 Jun 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8643
EGU General Assembly 2021
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

First year of real-time VOC measurements at the SIRTA facility (Paris region, France): diurnal and seasonal variabilities, impact of lockdowns on air quality

Leïla Simon1, Valérie Gros1, Jean-Eudes Petit1, François Truong1, Roland Sarda-Esteve1, Dominique Baisnee1, Nicolas Bonnaire1, Jean-Charles Dupont2, Martial Haeffelin2, Caroline Marchand3, and Olivier Favez3
Leïla Simon et al.
  • 1CNRS-LSCE, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
  • 2IPSL, Université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Guyancourt, France
  • 3INERIS, Verneuil-en-Halatte, France

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) have direct influences on air quality and climate. They also play a key role in atmospheric chemistry, as they are precursors of secondary pollutants, such as ozone (O3) and secondary organic aerosols (SOA).

Long-term datasets of in-situ atmospheric measurements are crucial to characterize the variability of atmospheric chemical composition. Online and continuous measurements of O3, NOx and aerosols have been achieved at the SIRTA-ACTRIS facility (Paris region, France), since 2012. Regarding VOCs, they have been measured there for several years thanks to bi-weekly samplings followed by offline Gas Chromatography analysis. However, this method doesn’t provide a good representation of the temporal variability of VOC concentrations. To tackle this issue, online VOC measurements using a Proton-Transfer-Reaction Quadrupole Mass-Spectrometer (PTR-Q-MS) have been started in January 2020.

The dataset acquired during the first year of online VOC measurements is analyzed, which gives insights on VOC seasonal variability. The additional long-term datasets obtained from co-located measurements (O3, NOx, aerosol physical and chemical properties, meteorological parameters) are also used for the sake of this study.

Due to Covid-19 pandemic, the year 2020 notably comprised a total lockdown in France in Spring, and a lighter one in Autumn. Therefore, a focus can be made on the impact of these lockdowns on the VOC variability and sources. To this end, the diurnal cycles of VOCs considered markers for anthropogenic sources are carefully investigated. Results notably indicate that markers for traffic and wood burning sources behave quite differently during the Spring lockdown in comparison to the other periods. A source apportionment analysis using positive matrix factorization allows to further document the seasonal variability of VOC sources and the impacts on air quality associated with the lockdown measures.

How to cite: Simon, L., Gros, V., Petit, J.-E., Truong, F., Sarda-Esteve, R., Baisnee, D., Bonnaire, N., Dupont, J.-C., Haeffelin, M., Marchand, C., and Favez, O.: First year of real-time VOC measurements at the SIRTA facility (Paris region, France): diurnal and seasonal variabilities, impact of lockdowns on air quality, EGU General Assembly 2021, online, 19–30 Apr 2021, EGU21-8643, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu21-8643, 2021.