American Association for Aerosol Research - Abstract Submission

AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

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Long-term Airborne Black Carbon Measurements on a Lufthansa Passenger Aircraft

Jeannine Ditas, Hang Su, Dieter Scharffe, Gavin McMeeking, Yuxuan Zhang, Carl Brenninkmeijer, Ulrich Poeschl, YAFANG CHENG, MPIC

     Abstract Number: 155
     Working Group: Carbonaceous Aerosols in the Atmosphere

Abstract
Aerosol particles containing black carbon are the most absorbing component of incoming solar radiation and exert a significant positive radiative forcing thus forming next to CO2 the strongest component of current global warming. Nevertheless, the role of black carbon particles and especially their complex interaction with clouds needs further research which is hampered by the limited experimental data, especially observations in the free and upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.

In August 2014, a single particle soot photometer (SP2) was included in the extensive scientific payload of the CARIBIC (Civil Aircraft for the Regular Investigation of the atmosphere Based on an Instrument Container) project. CARIBIC is in operation since 1997 and carries out systematic observations of trace gas and aerosol sampling and on-line analyses at 10-12 km altitude. For this a special air freight container combining different instruments is transported on a monthly basis using a Lufthansa Airbus A340-600 passenger aircraft with destinations from 120°W to 120°E and 10°N to 75°N. The integration of a SP2 offers the possibility for the first long-term measurement of global distribution of black carbon and so far flights up to April 2015 have been conducted.

Up to date the SP2 measurements have been analyzed for flights over four continents from Munich to San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Beijing and Cape Town. The first measurements show promising results of black carbon including periods when background concentrations in the UTLS were encountered. Beside a general distribution of number and mass of black carbon particles, peak events were detected with up to 20 times higher concentrations compared to the background. Moreover, high concentration plumes have been observed continuously over a range of 10,000 km. Interestingly, our results show also a generally lower amount of black carbon mass in the tropics compared to the mid latitude northern hemisphere.