The urban area of Seoul, South Korea, is one of the largest in the world, with a population of 25 million. Like other global megacities, it is subject to poor air quality. Nighttime chemistry contributes to atmospheric chemical cycles that define air quality in these regions, but it is difficult to study because of the nighttime vertical stratification, which leads to concentration of primary pollutants and suppression of chemistry near the surface but active chemistry in an altitude range above 100 m. In May and June of 2015, the group of Kyung-Eun Min from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology hosted us at the Seoul Tower during the Megacity Air Pollution Study at the Seoul Tower. Sampling from a height of 300 m above the city, the investigation characterized daytime and nighttime chemical transformation rates, measuring some of the most rapid nighttime chemistry in the world.
Selected Papers
Brown, S.S., H.J. An, M. Lee, J.H. Park, S.D. Lee, D.L. Fibiger, E.E. McDuffie, W.P. Dubé, N.L. Wagner, and K.E. Min, Cavity Enhanced Spectroscopy for Measurement of Nitrogen Oxides in the Anthropocene: Results from the Seoul Tower during MAPS 2015. Faraday Discussions, 2017. 200: p. 529-557. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2017/fd/c7fd00001d#!divAbstract