American Association for Aerosol Research - Abstract Submission

AAAR 36th Annual Conference
October 16 - October 20, 2017
Raleigh Convention Center
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA

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Comparison of Airborne-Based Measurements of Biomass Burning Markers Levoglucosan and Aerosol Mass Spectrometer m/z 60 and the Role of Residential Burning during the WINTER Campaign

AMY P. SULLIVAN, Hongyu Guo, Jason Schroder, Pedro Campuzano-Jost, Jose-Luis Jimenez, Teresa Campos, Joel A. Thornton, Steven S. Brown, Rodney J. Weber, Colorado State University

     Abstract Number: 236
     Working Group: Carbonaceous Aerosols in the Atmosphere

Abstract
Biomass burning is one of the main sources of organic aerosols (OA). During winter, residential burning is likely to dominate over prescribed burning and wildfires. Therefore, in the winter, it is important to be able to determine the contribution of residential burning to the total OA concentration. One of the most common methods used to make this determination is through the use of smoke marker measurements. Therefore, as part of the WINTER (Wintertime Investigation of Transport, Emissions, and Reactivity) Campaign, a Particle-into-Liquid Sampler system with a fraction collector was flown aboard the C-130 aircraft during 13 research flights conducted along the East Coast of the United States. Two min integrated liquid samples were collected and analyzed off-line for the smoke marker levoglucosan using high-performance anion-exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection. Levoglucosan correlated well with carbon monoxide (CO) (R2 = 0.51) and OA (R2 = 0.47) for all flights, suggesting the importance of biomass burning as a source during WINTER. Levoglucosan and the AMS (aerosol mass spectrometer) biomass burning marker m/z 60 were moderately correlated (R2 = 0.51), but the behavior of the two species seemed to differ. Determination of the contribution of organic carbon (OC) due to residential burning suggested it ranged from ~25% to 90% of the OC and was a significant source across the entire sampling region.