Abstract. Atmospheric chambers have been widely used to study secondary organic aerosol
(SOA) properties and formation from various precursors under different
controlled environmental conditions and to develop parameterization to
represent SOA formation in chemical transport models (CTMs). Chamber
experiments are however limited in number, performed under conditions that
differ from the atmosphere and can be subject to potential artefacts from
chamber walls. Here, the Generator for Explicit Chemistry and Kinetics of
Organics in the Atmosphere (GECKO-A) modelling tool has been used in a box
model under various environmental conditions to (i) explore the sensitivity
of SOA formation and properties to changes on physical and chemical
conditions and (ii) develop a volatility basis set (VBS)-type parameterization.
The set of parent hydrocarbons includes n-alkanes and 1-alkenes with 10, 14,
18, 22 and 26 carbon atoms, α-pinene, β-pinene and limonene,
benzene, toluene, o-xylene, m-xylene and p-xylene. Simulated SOA yields and
their dependences on the precursor structure, organic aerosol load,
temperature and NOx levels are consistent with the
literature. GECKO-A was used to explore the distribution of molar mass,
vaporization enthalpy, OH reaction rate and Henry's law coefficient of the
millions of secondary organic compounds formed during the oxidation of the
different precursors and under various conditions. From these explicit
simulations, a VBS-GECKO parameterization designed to be implemented in 3-D
air quality models has been tuned to represent SOA formation from the 18
precursors using GECKO-A as a reference. In evaluating the ability of
VBS-GECKO to capture the temporal evolution of SOA mass, the mean relative
error is less than 20 % compared to GECKO-A. The optimization procedure
has been automated to facilitate the update of the VBS-GECKO on the basis of
the future GECKO-A versions, its extension to other precursors and/or its
modification to carry additional information.