Articles | Volume 18, issue 12
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-3965-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Special issue:
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-3965-2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Development and technical paper
| 
01 Jul 2025
Development and technical paper |
| 01 Jul 2025
| 01 Jul 2025
Numerical investigations on the modelling of ultrafine particles in SSH-aerosol-v1.3a: size resolution and redistribution
CEREA, École des Ponts, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, EdF R&D, IPSL, Marne-la-Vallée, France
CEREA, École des Ponts, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, EdF R&D, IPSL, Marne-la-Vallée, France
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Soo-Jin Park, Lya Lugon, Oscar Jacquot, Youngseob Kim, Alexia Baudic, Barbara D'Anna, Ludovico Di Antonio, Claudia Di Biagio, Fabrice Dugay, Olivier Favez, Véronique Ghersi, Aline Gratien, Julien Kammer, Jean-Eudes Petit, Olivier Sanchez, Myrto Valari, Jérémy Vigneron, and Karine Sartelet
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 3363–3387, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-3363-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-3363-2025, 2025
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To accurately represent the population exposure to outdoor concentrations of pollutants of interest to health (NO2, PM2.5, black carbon, and ultrafine particles), multi-scale modelling down to the street scale is set up and evaluated using measurements from field campaigns. An exposure scaling factor is defined, allowing regional-scale simulations to be corrected to evaluate population exposure. Urban heterogeneities strongly influence NO2, black carbon, and ultrafine particles but less strongly PM2.5.
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EGUsphere, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2191, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2191, 2025
This preprint is open for discussion and under review for Geoscientific Model Development (GMD).
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SSH-aerosol v2 simulates the evolution of primary and secondary pollutants via gas-phase chemistry, aerosol dynamics (including ultrafine particles), and intra-particle reactions. It uses a sectional approach for size and composition, includes a wall-loss module, and links gas-phase mechanisms of different complexity to secondary organic aerosol formation. Representation of particle phase composition allows viscosity and non-ideality to be taken into account.
Soo-Jin Park, Lya Lugon, Oscar Jacquot, Youngseob Kim, Alexia Baudic, Barbara D'Anna, Ludovico Di Antonio, Claudia Di Biagio, Fabrice Dugay, Olivier Favez, Véronique Ghersi, Aline Gratien, Julien Kammer, Jean-Eudes Petit, Olivier Sanchez, Myrto Valari, Jérémy Vigneron, and Karine Sartelet
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 3363–3387, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-3363-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-3363-2025, 2025
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To accurately represent the population exposure to outdoor concentrations of pollutants of interest to health (NO2, PM2.5, black carbon, and ultrafine particles), multi-scale modelling down to the street scale is set up and evaluated using measurements from field campaigns. An exposure scaling factor is defined, allowing regional-scale simulations to be corrected to evaluate population exposure. Urban heterogeneities strongly influence NO2, black carbon, and ultrafine particles but less strongly PM2.5.
Alexis Squarcioni, Yelva Roustan, Myrto Valari, Youngseob Kim, Karine Sartelet, Lya Lugon, Fabrice Dugay, and Robin Voitot
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 25, 93–117, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-93-2025, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-25-93-2025, 2025
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Victor Lannuque and Karine Sartelet
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 8589–8606, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-8589-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-8589-2024, 2024
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Large uncertainties remain in understanding secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation and speciation from naphthalene oxidation. This study details the development of the first near-explicit chemical scheme for naphthalene oxidation by OH, which includes kinetic and mechanistic data, and is able to reproduce most of the experimentally identified products in both gas and particle phases.
Alice Maison, Lya Lugon, Soo-Jin Park, Alexia Baudic, Christopher Cantrell, Florian Couvidat, Barbara D'Anna, Claudia Di Biagio, Aline Gratien, Valérie Gros, Carmen Kalalian, Julien Kammer, Vincent Michoud, Jean-Eudes Petit, Marwa Shahin, Leila Simon, Myrto Valari, Jérémy Vigneron, Andrée Tuzet, and Karine Sartelet
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 6011–6046, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-6011-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-6011-2024, 2024
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This study presents the development of a bottom-up inventory of urban tree biogenic emissions. Emissions are computed for each tree based on their location and characteristics and are integrated in the regional air quality model WRF-CHIMERE. The impact of these biogenic emissions on air quality is quantified for June–July 2022. Over Paris city, urban trees increase the concentrations of particulate organic matter by 4.6 %, of PM2.5 by 0.6 %, and of ozone by 1.0 % on average over 2 months.
Evangelia Kostenidou, Baptiste Marques, Brice Temime-Roussel, Yao Liu, Boris Vansevenant, Karine Sartelet, and Barbara D'Anna
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 2705–2729, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-2705-2024, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-2705-2024, 2024
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Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) from gasoline vehicles can be a significant source of particulate matter in urban areas. Here the chemical composition of secondary volatile organic compounds and SOA produced by photo-oxidation of Euro 5 gasoline vehicle emissions was studied. The volatility of the SOA formed was calculated. Except for the temperature and the concentration of the aerosol, additional parameters may play a role in the gas-to-particle partitioning.
Victor Lannuque, Barbara D'Anna, Evangelia Kostenidou, Florian Couvidat, Alvaro Martinez-Valiente, Philipp Eichler, Armin Wisthaler, Markus Müller, Brice Temime-Roussel, Richard Valorso, and Karine Sartelet
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 15537–15560, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15537-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15537-2023, 2023
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Large uncertainties remain in understanding secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation from toluene oxidation. In this study, speciation measurements in gaseous and particulate phases were carried out, providing partitioning and volatility data on individual toluene SOA components at different temperatures. A new detailed oxidation mechanism was developed to improve modeled speciation, and effects of different processes involved in gas–particle partitioning at the molecular scale are explored.
Thibaud Sarica, Alice Maison, Yelva Roustan, Matthias Ketzel, Steen Solvang Jensen, Youngseob Kim, Christophe Chaillou, and Karine Sartelet
Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 5281–5303, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-5281-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-5281-2023, 2023
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A new version of the Model of Urban Network of Intersecting Canyons and Highways (MUNICH) is developed to represent heterogeneities of concentrations in streets. The street volume is discretized vertically and horizontally to limit the artificial dilution of emissions and concentrations. This new version is applied to street networks in Copenhagen and Paris. The comparisons to observations are improved, with higher concentrations of pollutants emitted by traffic at the bottom of the street.
Chao Lin, Yunyi Wang, Ryozo Ooka, Cédric Flageul, Youngseob Kim, Hideki Kikumoto, Zhizhao Wang, and Karine Sartelet
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 23, 1421–1436, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-1421-2023, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-1421-2023, 2023
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In this study, SSH-aerosol, a modular box model that simulates the evolution of gas, primary, and secondary aerosols, is coupled with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, OpenFOAM and Code_Saturne. The transient dispersion of pollutants emitted from traffic in a street canyon of Greater Paris is simulated. The coupled model achieved better agreement in NO2 and PM10 with measurement data than the conventional CFD simulation which regards pollutants as passive scalars.
Zhizhao Wang, Florian Couvidat, and Karine Sartelet
Geosci. Model Dev., 15, 8957–8982, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-8957-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-15-8957-2022, 2022
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Air quality models need to reliably predict secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) at a reasonable computational cost. Thus, we developed GENOA v1.0, a mechanism reduction algorithm that preserves the accuracy of detailed gas-phase chemical mechanisms for SOA formation, thereby improving the practical use of actual chemistry in SOA models. With GENOA, a near-explicit chemical scheme was reduced to 2 % of its original size and computational time, with an average error of less than 3 %.
Youngseob Kim, Lya Lugon, Alice Maison, Thibaud Sarica, Yelva Roustan, Myrto Valari, Yang Zhang, Michel André, and Karine Sartelet
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Alice Maison, Cédric Flageul, Bertrand Carissimo, Yunyi Wang, Andrée Tuzet, and Karine Sartelet
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 9369–9388, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-9369-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-9369-2022, 2022
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This paper presents a parameterization of the tree crown effect on air flow and pollutant dispersion in a street network model used to simulate air quality at the street level. The new parameterization is built using a finer-scale model (computational fluid dynamics). The tree effect increases with the leaf area index and the crown volume fraction of the trees; the street horizontal velocity is reduced by up to 68 % and the vertical transfer into or out of the street by up to 23 %.
Karine Sartelet, Youngseob Kim, Florian Couvidat, Maik Merkel, Tuukka Petäjä, Jean Sciare, and Alfred Wiedensohler
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 8579–8596, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-8579-2022, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-8579-2022, 2022
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A methodology is defined to estimate number emissions from an inventory providing mass emissions. Number concentrations are simulated over Greater Paris using different nucleation parameterisations (binary, ternary involving sulfuric acid and ammonia, and heteromolecular involving sulfuric acid and extremely low-volatility organics, ELVOCs). The comparisons show that ternary nucleation may not be a dominant process for new particle formation in cities, but they stress the role of ELVOCs.
Boris Vansevenant, Cédric Louis, Corinne Ferronato, Ludovic Fine, Patrick Tassel, Pascal Perret, Evangelia Kostenidou, Brice Temime-Roussel, Barbara D'Anna, Karine Sartelet, Véronique Cerezo, and Yao Liu
Atmos. Meas. Tech., 14, 7627–7655, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-7627-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-14-7627-2021, 2021
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A new method was developed to correct wall losses of particles on Teflon walls using a new environmental chamber. It was applied to experiments with six diesel vehicles (Euro 3 to 6), tested on a chassis dynamometer. Emissions of particles and precursors were obtained under urban and motorway conditions. The chamber experiments help understand the role of physical processes in diesel particle evolutions in the dark. These results can be applied to situations such as tunnels or winter rush hours.
Lya Lugon, Jérémy Vigneron, Christophe Debert, Olivier Chrétien, and Karine Sartelet
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 7001–7019, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-7001-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-7001-2021, 2021
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The multiscale Street-in-Grid model is used to simulate black carbon (BC) concentrations in streets. To respect street-surface mass balance, particle resuspension is estimated with a new approach based on deposited mass. The contribution of resuspension is low, but non-exhaust emissions from tyre wear may largely contribute to BC concentrations. The impact of the two-way dynamic coupling between scales on BC concentrations varies depending on the street geometry and traffic emission intensity.
Eve-Agnès Fiorentino, Henri Wortham, and Karine Sartelet
Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 2747–2780, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-2747-2021, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-2747-2021, 2021
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Indoor air quality (IAQ) is strongly influenced by reactivity with surfaces, which is called heterogeneous reactivity. To date, this reactivity is barely integrated into numerical models due to the strong uncertainties it is subjected to. In this work, an open-source IAQ model, called the H2I model, is developed to consider both gas-phase and heterogeneous reactivity and simulate indoor concentrations of inorganic compounds.
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Short summary
Modelling the size distribution and the number concentration is important to represent ultrafine particles. A new analytic formulation is presented to compute coagulation partition coefficients, allowing us to lower the numerical diffusion associated with the resolution of aerosol dynamics. The significance of this effect is assessed in a 0D box model and over greater Paris with a chemistry transport model, using different size resolutions of the particle distribution.
Modelling the size distribution and the number concentration is important to represent ultrafine...
