Abstract: Air Pollution
Organic aerosols account for half of the fine particulate air pollution in populated areas of the world. Outside of urban areas, the formation of secondary organic aerosols from precursor molecules during winter was thought to be minor, but new measurements show that this is not true. Shah et al. present observations showing that more than half of the wintertime organic aerosol production in the northeastern United States is secondary and originates from air pollution sources. Their results suggest that wintertime organic aerosol pollution can be reduced further by reducing the quantities of their precursors.
Geophys. Res. Lett. 10.1029/2018GL081530 (2019).