AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Source Apportionment of the Carbonaceous Aerosols at an Urban Background Site of Vilnius (Lithuania) during January 2014
KRISTINA PLAUSKAITE, Steigvile Bycenkiene, Carlo Bozzetti, Roman Frohlich, Genrik Mordas, Vidmantas Ulevicius, SRI Center for Physical Sciences and Technology
Abstract Number: 226 Working Group: Urban Aerosols
Abstract Carbonaceous aerosols are one of the most important constituents in the atmosphere, formed by different types of processes. During winter biomass burning is one of the major sources of organic aerosol (OA) in many parts of Europe. Typically OA comprises 20 – 90% of the submicron particulate mass. An intensive one month long field campaign aiming at the real-time monitoring of non-refractory submicron (NR-PM1) aerosol species including organics, sulfate, nitrate, ammonium, and chloride was performed at an urban background site in Vilnius (Lithuania, 54°38'N, 25°10'E, 197 m a.s.l.) during winter. Meteorological conditions varied along the studied period due to the transition from moderately cold (~2ºC) weather to extreme cold with lowest temperature up to -25°C. An Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (ACSM) was deployed. The average submicron non-refractory particle mass concentration (± standard deviation) for the whole period was 46.2 ± 29.6 micro-grams m$^(-3). During moderately low temperatures aerosol particles were composed mainly of organics 43%, followed by nitrate, ammonium, sulfate and chloride with contributions of 24, 16, 15 and 2%, respectively, whereas the amount of organics during extreme low temperature period increased up to 55%, while nitrate, ammonium, sulfate and chloride contributions decreased to 19, 15, 10 and 1%, respectively. Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) analysis of ACSM mass spectra of OA identified four components, i.e., hydrocarbon-like OA (HOA, likely to be related to traffic and residual fuel oil combustion during extreme low temperatures), secondary OA (SOA, indicating more aged oxidized aerosol), N-containing organic aerosol (NOA) and biomass burning OA (BBOA, mostly originated from residential wood burning). This work was supported by the Lithuanian-Swiss Cooperation Programme “Research and Development” project AEROLIT (No. CH-3-ŠMM-01/08).