Equivalent Black Carbon Aerosol Properties and Their Relationship with the Heating Season in Urban Environments

Abstract

Black carbon (BC) aerosols have a considerable impact on humans because they not only cause environmental pollution and reduce visibility but also harm human health. During the heating season in northern China, a large amount of coal is burned for heating, producing a large amount of BC. There are few studies on BC properties during the heating season. In this paper, BC is measured optically, so it is referred to as equivalent black carbon (EBC). This paper investigated EBC properties in depth during the heating and nonheating seasons of a typical urban environment in China with two years of EBC measurements. The results show that: (1) EBC aerosol concentrations during the heating season were significantly higher than those during the nonheating season. (2) The main sources of EBC aerosols throughout the year are liquid sources. During the heating season, solid sources (coal and biomass combustion) are dominant. (3) The proportion of brown carbon (BrC) produced by biomass energy during the heating season is greater than that during the nonheating season. (4) The resulting backward trajectory indicates that a large portion of the high EBC aerosol concentration sources originate from northern and northwestern China. Our results reveal that the characteristics and sources of EBC in the urban environment of northern China vary widely, suggesting that different measures should be taken to reduce BC aerosol concentrations during heating and nonheating seasons.

Change detection in Fangcheng Golden Camellia National Nature Reserve based on PCA and K-means clustering

“…where X is the original image matrix, T is the change matrix, and Y is the transformed matrix. If the original remote sensing image data is an n*m matrix X and T is an orthogonal matrix, the covariance matrix C is shown in equation (2).…”

“…Remote sensing detects and acquires target information in a non-contact manner through sensing equipment carried on a long-range platform. With the development of space technology and communication system and other related technologies, as an important technical means for observing earth features, remote sensing has been commonly applied in many fields such as ecological environmental protection, vegetation monitoring, crop yield estimation, territorial spatial planning and global change research [1][2][3]. The rapidly developing satellite remote sensing technology in recent decades provides multitemporal and comprehensive remote sensing data information for more applications with its high spatial and temporal characteristics and wide observation range, high measurement accuracy and repeatable observation.…”