Chemical Composition and Evolution from Western Wildfires in 2018: Highlighting Results from the NCAR Trace Organic Gas Analyzer

The chemistry in western wildfire smoke has major ramifications for air quality, nutrient cycles, weather and climate. The NSF WE-CAN project provided the opportunity to observe western wildfires during the summer 2018 season from the highly instrumented NCAR/NSF C-130 aircraft. The organic chemical composition of the outflow from some of the major 2018 summer fires was measured with a variety of instruments including the NCAR Trace Organic Gas Analyzer (TOGA), the University of Montana PTR-TOF, the University Washington TOF-CIMS, and the NSF/Colorado State University Advanced Whole Air Sampler (AWAS). We will highlight the results from the TOGA instrument with supporting data from the other instruments. Emission ratios were documented for a large number of fires and the chemical evolution was measured for a number of plumes and compared to results from a detailed photochemical box model.