Atmospheric 222Rn concentration and source term at El Arenosillo 100 m meteorological tower in southwest Spain

Grossi, Claudia; Arnold, Dèlia; Adame, José Antonio; López-Coto, I.; Bolı́var, J.P.; Morena, B. A. de la; Vargas, Arturo

doi:10.1016/j.radmeas.2011.11.006

Cited by 50 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…The height of the box can be determined from the near-surface radon concentration, C, if radon emissions are known. The box-model approach has been used for several studies since the 1970s (including Pitari et al, 2014;Grossi et al, 2012;Di Carlo et al, 2007;Sesana et al, 2006;Galmarini, 2006;Pasini and Ameli, 2003;Kataoka, 1998;Allegrini et al, 1994;Fujinami and Esaka, 1988;Guedalia et al, 1980;Fontan et al, 1979). In the model, the change in radon concentration within the well-mixed layer adjacent to the surface is due to a balance between surface emissions, radioactive decay and, if the layer is growing, dilution.…”

Section: Stability Influences On Mixing Depth: a Box Model Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

On the use of radon for quantifying the effects of atmospheric stability on urban emissions

et al. 2015

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Abstract.Radon is increasingly being used as a tool for quantifying stability influences on urban pollutant concentrations. Bulk radon gradients are ideal for this purpose, since the vertical differencing substantially removes contributions from processes on timescales greater than diurnal and (assuming a constant radon source) gradients are directly related to the intensity of nocturnal mixing. More commonly, however, radon measurements are available only at a single height. In this study we argue that single-height radon observations should not be used quantitatively as an indicator of atmospheric stability without prior conditioning of the time series to remove contributions from larger-scale "nonlocal" processes. We outline a simple technique to obtain an approximation of the diurnal radon gradient signal from a single-height measurement time series, and use it to derive a four category classification scheme for atmospheric stability on a "whole night" basis. A selection of climatological and pollution observations in the Sydney region are then subdivided according to the radon-based scheme on an annual and seasonal basis. We compare the radon-based scheme against a commonly used Pasquill-Gifford (P-G) type stability classification and reveal that the most stable category in the P-G scheme is less selective of the strongly stable nights than the radon-based scheme; this lead to significant underestimation of pollutant concentrations on the most stable nights by the P-G scheme. Lastly, we applied the radon-based classification scheme to mixing height estimates calculated from the diurnal radon accumulation time series, which provided insight to the range of nocturnal mixing depths expected at the site for each of the stability classes.

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Section: Stability Influences On Mixing Depth: a Box Model Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

On the use of radon for quantifying the effects of atmospheric stability on urban emissions

et al. 2015

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“…Radon has previously been used to study vertical mixing based on temporal variations , and references therein) or on vertical profiles from aircraft (Guedalia et al, 1972;Lee and Cicerone, 1997;Williams et al, 2011), towers Grossi et al, 2012;Williams et al, 2013) or sites at different altitudes (Chevillard et al, 2002). Radon has been used for the estimation of local to regional surface emissions of trace gases (van der Laan et al, 2014), and has been incorporated into transport models as an auxiliary diagnostic of mixing (Vogel et al, 2013) or for testing transport or parameterisations (Feichter and Crutzen, 1990;Zhang et al, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface-to-mountaintop transport characterised by radon observations at the Jungfraujoch

et al. 2014

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Abstract. Atmospheric composition measurements at Jungfraujoch are affected intermittently by boundary-layer air which is brought to the station by processes including thermally driven (anabatic) mountain winds. Using observations of radon-222, and a new objective analysis method, we quantify the land-surface influence at Jungfraujoch hour by hour and detect the presence of anabatic winds on a daily basis. During 2010-2011, anabatic winds occurred on 40 % of days, but only from April to September. Anabatic wind days were associated with warmer air temperatures over a large fraction of Europe and with a shift in air-mass properties, even when comparing days with a similar mean radon concentration. Excluding days with anabatic winds, however, did not lead to a better definition of the unperturbed aerosol background than a definition based on radon alone. This implies that a radon threshold reliably excludes local influences from both anabatic and non-anabatic vertical-transport processes.

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“…Radon-222 is a naturally occurring passive tracer, chemically inert and released from the surface at a relatively constant rate. Atmospheric profiles of radon measured from aircraft , or gradient measurements from towers Grossi et al, 2012;Moses et al, 1960), can be used to study mixing processes. Once emitted from soil, radon's only significant removal process is radioactive decay, and its half-life of 3.8 d means that a vertical concentration gradient prevails over land surfaces, with higher radon loads in the boundary layer than in the free troposphere.…”

Section: Published By Copernicus Publications On Behalf Of the Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Improved mixing height monitoring through a combination of lidar and radon measurements

et al. 2013

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Surface-based radon (<sup>222</sup>Rn) measurements can be combined with lidar backscatter to obtain a higher quality time series of mixing height within the planetary boundary layer (PBL) than is possible from lidar alone, and a more quantitative measure of mixing height than is possible from only radon. The reason why lidar measurements are improved is that there are times when lidar signals are ambiguous, and reliably attributing the mixing height to the correct aerosol layer presents a challenge. By combining lidar with a mixing length scale derived from a time series of radon concentration, automated and robust attribution is possible during the morning transition. <br><br> Radon measurements provide mixing information during the night, but concentrations also depend on the strength of surface emissions. After processing radon in combination with lidar, we obtain nightly measurements of radon emissions and are able to normalise the mixing length scale for changing emissions. After calibration with lidar, the radon-derived equivalent mixing height agrees with other measures of mixing on daily and hourly timescales and is a potential method for studying intermittent mixing in nocturnal boundary layers

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Atmospheric 222Rn concentration and source term at El Arenosillo 100 m meteorological tower in southwest Spain

Cited by 50 publications

References 38 publications

On the use of radon for quantifying the effects of atmospheric stability on urban emissions

On the use of radon for quantifying the effects of atmospheric stability on urban emissions

Surface-to-mountaintop transport characterised by radon observations at the Jungfraujoch

Improved mixing height monitoring through a combination of lidar and radon measurements

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