Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net 1680-7367 1680-7375 9 3 2009 10.5194/acpd-9-13355-2009 http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/13355/2009/ http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/13355/2009/acpd-9-13355-2009.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/13355/2009/acpd-9-13355-2009.pdf 13355 13406 2009-06-17 A photochemical model and sensitivity study of the triple-oxygen isotopic (&Delta;¹⁷O) composition of NO_y, HO_x, and H₂O₂ in a polluted boundary layer G. Dominguez gdominguez@ucsd.edu G. Wilkins M. H. Thiemens University of California, San Diego, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, La Jolla, California, USA University of California, Berkeley, Department of Mathematics, Berkeley, California, USA We present a photochemical model developed for the <i>explicit</i> calculation of triple oxygen isotopic compositions (&Delta;¹⁷O) of major atmospheric species. While we focus on the &Delta;¹⁷O of HNO₃ and aerosol nitrate (NO^&minus;₃) and its precursors such as NO, NO₂ and N₂O₅, the general implementation given here also provides &Delta;¹⁷O predictions for other important atmospheric compounds such as OH, H₂O₂, and HO₂. Through the use of a simple aerosol surface area model, we calculate the &Delta;¹⁷O composition of aerosol nitrate produced as a function of aerosol size and aerosol surface type. We explore the sensitivity of the &Delta;¹⁷O of atmospheric species through a series of sensitivity studies and show that the &Delta;¹⁷O of atmospheric compounds is affected to various degrees by environmental factors such as temperature, relative humidity, ozone concentration, NO_x flux, and total ozone column density. In addition, we find that &Delta;¹⁷O of these species is sensitive to photochemical conditions such as cloud albedo, latitude, and time of year. 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