Real-Time Monitoring and Sampling of Alpine Black and Brown Carbon from the Colorado Rockies

STEVEN SHARPE, Catalina Botero-Carrizosa, Felipe Rivera-Adorno, Jay Tomlin, Nurun Nahar Lata, Zezhen Cheng, Erik Hulm, Swarup China, Ryan Moffet, Alexander Laskin, Purdue University

     Abstract Number: 309
     Working Group: Remote and Regional Atmospheric Aerosol

Abstract
Snowpack in the Colorado Rockies is a crucial source of fresh water, nutrients, and carbon for the arid Southwest United States. The lifetime and evolution of alpine snowpack is influenced by the deposition of light absorbing particles (LAP), primarily black carbon (BC), brown carbon (BrC), and mineral dust (MD). LAP in snowpack decreases its albedo and accelerates spring snowmelt. We deployed a Magee Scientific AE33 aethalometer for real-time monitoring and sampling of BC and BrC from spring 2022 until fall 2023 and a Time-Resolve Aerosol Collector (TRAC) during the summer of 2023 as part of the Surface-Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL) campaign. Aethalometer optical data was analyzed with K-means clustering algorithm to identify key events for filter tape analysis with Direct Analysis in Real Time (DART) high resolution mass spectrometry aided with temperature programed desorption (TPD) to assess the relationship between the optical and chemical properties and Chemical Imaging (CI) analysis from TRAC samples. Events include smoke plumes from the 2023 Canadian wildfire and a series of local emissions from nearby campfires. Correlating optical, CI, and HRMS data will improve particle resolved models that account for individual particle complexity in alpine environments.