Temperature-Dependent Evaporative Anthropogenic VOC Emissions Significantly Exacerbate Regional Ozone Pollution

The evaporative emissions of anthropogenic volatile organic compounds (AVOCs) are sensitive to ambient temperature. This sensitivity forms an air pollution-meteorology connection that has not been assessed on a regional scale. We parametrized the temperature dependence of evaporative AVOC fluxes in a regional air quality model and evaluated the impacts on surface ozone in the Beijing−Tianjin−Hebei (BTH) area of China during the summer of 2017. The temperature dependency of AVOC emissions drove an enhanced simulated ozone-temperature sensitivity of 1.0 to 1.8 μg m−3 K−1, comparable to the simulated ozone-temperature sensitivity driven by the temperature dependency of biogenic VOC emissions (1.7 to 2.4 μg m−3 K−1). Ozone enhancements driven by temperature-induced AVOC increases were localized to their point of emission and were relatively more important in urban areas than in rural regions. The inclusion of the temperature-dependent AVOC emissions in our model improved the simulated ozone-temperature sensitivities on days of ozone exceedance. Our results demonstrated the importance of temperature-dependent AVOC emissions on surface ozone pollution and its heretofore unrepresented role in air pollution−meteorology interactions.