AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Characterization of Tropospheric Aerosols in a Remote Mountain Site in NE of Spain with an Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor
ANNA RIPOLL, María-Cruz Minguillón, Jorge Pey, Marco Pandolfi, Andrés Alastuey, Xavier Querol, Jose-Luis Jimenez, Douglas Day, IDAEA-CSIC
Abstract Number: 648 Working Group: Remote and Regional Atmospheric Aerosols
Abstract An Aerodyne Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (ACSM) was deployed at the Montsec (MSC, NE of Spain, 42 degrees 3’ N; 0 degrees 44’ W) remote background site, to characterize tropospheric aerosols composition, source origin and atmospheric processes. The ACSM measures the mass and the chemical composition of non-refractory submicron particulate matter in real-time, so concentrations of organics, sulfate, nitrate, ammonium and chloride were measured in situ at a time resolution of 1 hour. These non refractory components were also offline determined in PM$_1 24-h samples collected on quartz fiber filters with a sequential high-volume sampler. The refractory material in the aerosol was characterized with measurements of black carbon (BC) by using a Multi Angle Absorption Photometer (MAAP) one minute time resolution and of dust and metals using offline analyses.
This study shows the preliminary results of ACSM data and comparisons to other aerosol mass concentration estimation instruments. The ACSM + BC mass concentration shows good agreement with estimated mass from a Grimm Optical Particle Counter and a TSI SMPS size distribution of submicron particles. The ACSM + BC mass concentration is also well-correlated with submicron scattering measurements from a nephelometer (Aurora 3000, ECOTECH Pty) at three wavelengths, with mass scattering efficiencies consistent with the literature for each wavelength. Comparisons of the results from the filter measurements and the ACSM species concentrations will also be presented. Back-trajectory analyses and Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) results from the ACSM organic spectra and the filter data will be used to characterize the contributions of different sources and processes.