Search results for "Aerosol"
showing 10 items of 722 documents
COARSEMAP: synthesis of observations and models for coarse-mode aerosols
2017
Coarse mode aerosols influence Earth's climate and biogeochemistry by interacting with long-wave radiation, promoting ice nucleation, and contributing important elements to biogeochemical cycles during deposition. Yet coarse mode aerosols have received less emphasis in the scientific literature. Here we present first efforts to globally synthesize available mass concentration, compositionand optical depth data and modeling for the coarse mode aerosols (<10 μm) in a new project called "COARSEMAP" (http://www.geo.cornell.edu/eas/PeoplePlaces/Faculty/mahowald/COARSEMAP/). We seek more collaborators who have observational data, especially including elemental or composition data, and/or who a…
The requirement for the inclusion of formulation efficacy trials in pesticide preregistration evaluations
2008
BACKGROUND: Optimization of biocide use could serve to reduce the risks of biocides on human health. To optimize the risk/benefit ratio, it is important to develop procedures for evaluating the efficacy of biocide formulations. The authors examined the effectiveness of ten pyrethroid insecticide aerosol formulations registered for the household control of flies. Tests were performed using adult Musca domestica L. Knockdown effects and mortality were measured in a test chamber using the manufacturer's recommended discharge time. RESULTS: The knockdown effect varied greatly between aerosols of similar composition. The knockdown 15 min post-treatment was 66–98% for flies placed 120 cm above fl…
Concentrations, optical properties and sources of humic-like substances (HULIS) in fine particulate matter in Xi'an, Northwest China
2021
Humic-like substances (HULIS) are ubiquitous in the atmospheric environment, which affects both human health and climate. We present here the mass concentration and optical characteristics of HULIS isolated from aerosol samples collected in Xi'an, China. Both mass concentration and absorption coefficient (Abs365) of HULIS show clear seasonal differences, with the highest average in winter (3.91 μgC m-3 and 4.78 M m-1, respectively) and the lowest in summer (0.65 μgC m-3 and 0.55 M m-1, respectively). The sources of HULIS_C and light absorption of HULIS were analyzed by positive matrix factorization (PMF) and four major sources were resolved, including secondary formation, biomass burning, c…
Effective Henry's law partitioning and the salting constant of glyoxal in aerosols containing sulfate.
2013
The reversible partitioning of glyoxal was studied in simulation chamber experiments for the first time by time-resolved measurements of gas-phase and particle-phase concentrations in sulfate-containing aerosols. Two complementary methods for the measurement of glyoxal particle-phase concentrations are compared: (1) an offline method utilizing filter sampling of chamber aerosols followed by HPLC-MS/MS analysis and (2) positive matrix factorization (PMF) analysis of aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS) data. Ammonium sulfate (AS) and internally mixed ammonium sulfate/fulvic acid (AS/FA) seed aerosols both show an exponential increase of effective Henry's law coefficients (KH,eff) with AS concentr…
AEROgui: A graphical user interface for the optical properties of aerosols
2014
Atmospheric aerosols have an uncertain effect on climate and serious impacts on human health. The uncertainty in the aerosols' role on climate has several sources. First, aerosols have great spatial and temporal variability. The spatial variability arises from the fact that aerosols emitted in a certain place can travel thousands of kilometers, swept by the winds to modify the destination region's climate. The spatial variability also means that aerosols are inhomogeneously distributed in the vertical direction, which can lead to a differential effect on the energy balance depending on the aerosols' altitude. On the other hand, aerosols experience physical and chemical transformations in th…
Drop-on-demand sample introduction system coupled with the flowing atmospheric-pressure afterglow for direct molecular analysis of complex liquid mic…
2012
One of the fastest developing fields in analytical spectrochemistry in recent years is ambient desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (ADI-MS). This burgeoning interest has been due to the demonstrated advantages of the method: simple mass spectra, little or no sample preparation, and applicability to samples in the solid, liquid, or gaseous state. One such ADI-MS source, the flowing atmospheric-pressure afterglow (FAPA), is capable of direct analysis of solids just by aiming the source at the solid surface and sampling the produced ions into a mass spectrometer. However, direct introduction of significant volumes of liquid samples into this source has not been possible, as solvent loads c…
Climatology of the aerosol extinction-to-backscatter ratio from sun-photometric measurements
2010
The elastic lidar equation contains two unknown atmospheric parameters, namely, the particulate optical extinction and backscatter coefficients, which are related through the lidar ratio (i.e., the particulate-extinction-to-backscatter ratio). So far, independent inversion of the lidar signal has been carried out by means of Raman lidars (usually limited to nighttime measurements), high-spectral-resolution lidars, or scanning elastic lidars under the assumption of a homogeneously vertically stratified atmosphere. In this paper, we present a procedure to obtain the lidar ratio at 532 nm by a combined Sunphotometer– aerosol-model inversion, where the viability of the solution is largely reinf…
High Pressure Inside Nanometer-Sized Particles Influences the Rate and Products of Chemical Reactions
2021
International audience; The composition of organic aerosol has a pivotal influence on aerosol properties such as toxicity and cloud droplet formation capability, which could affect both climate and air quality. However, a comprehensive and fundamental understanding of the chemical and physical processes that occur in nanometer-sized atmospheric particles remains a challenge that severely limits the quantification and predictive capabilities of aerosol formation pathways. Here, we investigated the effects of a fundamental and hitherto unconsidered physical property of nanoparticles-the Laplace pressure. By studying the reaction of glyoxal with ammonium sulfate, both ubiquitous and important …
Water-Insoluble Organics Dominate Brown Carbon in Wintertime Urban Aerosol of China: Chemical Characteristics and Optical Properties.
2020
The chromophores responsible for light absorption in atmospheric brown carbon (BrC) are not well characterized, which hinders our understanding of BrC chemistry, the links with optical properties, and accurate model representations of BrC to global climate and atmospheric oxidative capacity. In this study, the light absorption properties and chromophore composition of three BrC fractions of different polarities were characterized for urban aerosol collected in Xi'an and Beijing in winter 2013-2014. These three BrC fractions show large differences in light absorption and chromophore composition, but the chromophores responsible for light absorption are similar in Xi'an and Beijing. Water-ins…
Towards comprehensive non-target screening using heart-cut two-dimensional liquid chromatography for the analysis of organic atmospheric tracers in i…
2021
Abstract Non-target screening of secondary organic aerosol compounds in ice cores is used to reconstruct atmospheric conditions and sources and is a valuable tool to elucidate the chemical profiles of samples with the aim to obtain as much information as possible from one mass spectrometric measurement. The coupling of mass spectrometry to chromatography limits the results of a non-target screening to signals of compounds within a certain polarity range based on the utilized stationary phases of the columns. Comprehensive two-dimensional liquid chromatography (LCxLC) introduces a second column of different functionality to enable the analysis of a broader range of analytes. Conventional LCx…