AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Characterization of Carbonaceous Aerosol in the Southeastern Baltic Sea Region (Event of Grass Fires)
STEIGVILE BYCENKIENE, Kristina Plauskaite, Vadimas Dudoitis, Carlo Bozzetti, Roman Frohlich, Vidmantas Ulevicius, SRI Center for Physical Sciences and Technology
Abstract Number: 225 Working Group: Carbonaceous Aerosols in the Atmosphere
Abstract Non-refractory submicron aerosol (NR-PM1) species measured by an Aerodyne Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (ACSM) have been successfully used to evaluate the impact of biomass burning on the composition of aerosol during wildfires in the marine background of South Eastern Baltic region in March 2014. Biomass burning aerosol (BBOA) was quantified from the ACSM data using a positive matrix factorization (PMF) analysis, while it spatial distribution was evaluated using air mass clustering approach. The aerosol chemical composition in air masses affected by large vegetation fires transported from the Kaliningrad region (Russia) and southeast (Belarus and Ukraine) during early spring (March 2014) was characterized. Non-fossil organic carbon was the dominant fraction of PM1, with primary fraction contributing 26-44% and a secondary fraction contributing 13-23%. By classifying the source regions of air masses it was possible to establish the dependence of the aerosol chemical composition on the type of air mass. The concentration weighted trajectory (CWT) maps shows a great influence of the Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Poland areas to BC and PM concentration in spring. About half of the potentially PM1 organic aerosol particles were internally mixed with more oxidised particles and were presumed to be transported mainly from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Observed new particle formation (NPF) events were attributed to the grass burning and secondary biomass burning product transformation and contributed to an increase in particle number concentration.
This work was supported by the Lithuanian-Swiss Cooperation Programme “Research and Development” project AEROLIT (No. CH-3-ŠMM-01/08).