AAAR 34th Annual Conference
October 12 - October 16, 2015
Hyatt Regency
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
10-Month Characterization of the Aerosol Number Size Distribution and Related Air Quality and Meteorology at a Reference Site in the Central U.S.
Robert Bullard, Ashish Singh, CHARLES STANIER, University of Iowa
Abstract Number: 500 Working Group: Remote and Regional Atmospheric Aerosols
Abstract Aerosol size distribution measurements at the Bondville environmental and atmospheric research site (BEARS) in Bondville, IL during 2013 and 2014 are reported together with a summary of related air quality variables. The instrumentation, data analysis, and quality assurance procedures involved in creating a final publically-released aerosol size distribution dataset for this site are presented. The size distributions are intercompared with public monitoring records from the same site, including passively and actively sampled ammonia, NOAA aerosol particle number and scattering and absorption, PM2.5 mass and composition, EPA NCore gas measurements (NO, NO2, SO2, O3, NOy). We further place the aerosol microphysics measurements into context with back trajectory analysis, correlations with locals wind direction and wind speed, K-means clustering of the size distribution, and summary of ultrafine volatility profile by tandem differential mobility analysis. Strengths of the dataset include the coverage of multiple seasons over 10 months, the full range of the size distribution from 3-500 nm, and the supplementing of the long-term record at this site (reaching back over a decade for many of the monitoring programs) with the full aerosol size distribution. Weaknesses of the dataset include instrument downtime problems due to instrument failures and extreme cold events during the 2014 winter “polar vortex” conditions when ambient temperatures reached -25 degrees C. Access procedures for using this valuable dataset for model evaluation are presented.