Future changes in isoprene-epoxydiol-derived secondary organic aerosol (IEPOX SOA) under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways: The importance of physicochemical dependency

With the explicit chemical mechanism, we find that IEPOX SOA is predicted to increase on average under all future SSP scenarios but with some variability in the results depending on regions and the scenario chosen. Isoprene emissions are the main driver of IEPOX SOA changes in the future climate, but the IEPOX SOA yield from isoprene emissions also changes by up to 50% depending on the SSP scenario, in particular due to different sulfur emissions.

We conduct sensitivity simulations with and without CO2 inhibition of isoprene emissions that is highly uncer-compare the predictions with the empirical parameterization based on the volatility basis set (VBS) approach. We then use the Community Earth System Model 2 (CESM2.1.0) with detailed isoprene chemistry and reactive uptake processes for the middle and end of the 21st century under four Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs): SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP37.0, and SSP5-8.5.

With the explicit chemical mechanism, we find that IEPOX SOA is predicted to increase on average under all future SSP scenarios but with some variability in the results depending on regions and the scenario chosen. Isoprene emissions are the main driver of IEPOX SOA changes in the future climate, but the IEPOX SOA yield from isoprene emissions also changes by up to 50% depending on the SSP scenario, in particular due to different sulfur emissions.

We conduct sensitivity simulations with and without CO2 inhibition of isoprene emissions that is highly uncertain, which results in factor of 2 differences in the predicted IEPOX SOA global burden, especially for the high-CO2 scenarios (SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5). Aerosol pH also plays a critical role in the IEPOX SOA formation rate, requiring accurate calculation of aerosol pH in chemistry models. On the other hand, isoprene SOA calculated with the VBS scheme predicts a nearly constant SOA yield from isoprene emissions across all SSP scenarios; as a result, it mostly follows isoprene emissions regardless of region and scenario.

This is because the VBS scheme does not consider heterogeneous chemistry; in other words, there is no dependency on aerosol properties.