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Trends of Submicron Atmospheric Aerosol Number Concentrations - Effect of Legislative Regulations and Economic Transformations
Nadežda Zíková, PETRA POKORNÁ, Zdenek Wagner, Jakub Ondráček, Philip K. Hopke, ICPF CAS, Prague, Czech Republic
Abstract Number: 95
Working Group: Urban Aerosols
Abstract
Atmospheric pollutant concentrations have mostly been decreasing in the last decades in the developed parts of the world, due to legislative mandates and subsequent regulations as well as economic transformations. For some pollutants, however, the decreases have slowed in the recent years. An example of such a pollutant is submicron atmospheric aerosol particles.
In the Czech Republic, long-term submicron measurements of the atmospheric aerosol were established in 11/2007 at Prague-Suchdol, an urban background station. Five-minute particle number size distributions from 10 to 500 nm were measured using a scanning mobility particle spectrometer (3034 TSI SMPS, upgraded to ACTRIS project standards in 4/2012). Even earlier, in 2002, submicron measurements begun in Rochester, NY with a similar system.
In the over 12-years long dataset (2007 – 2019), the temporal trends in submicron aerosol concentrations (total and size-resolved) were analyzed, calculating the Mann Kendall test and the Sen slope [1]. Trends were compared to the legislative, economic, and source structure changes both in Prague and Rochester, as mitigation strategies and economic factors affecting the atmospheric aerosol concentrations differ at the two locations.
In Prague, no statistically significant trend was found with the exception of summer concentrations with an increasing trend. In Rochester, the concentrations of particles over 30 nm were decreasing (p < 0.05). The decrease could be connected to strategies of reducing emissions from light- and heavy-duty vehicles and electric power generation [2]. In seasonal data, the same trend was observed with the exception of autumn concentrations of particles below 300 nm showing statistically insignificant trend.
Project LTAUSA19006 of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic is acknowledged for financial support.
[1] Collaud Coen et al., Atmos. Meas. Tech., 13:6945–6964, 2020.
[2] Squizzato et al., Atmos. Environ., 183, 209–224, 2018.