Field Masurements of Atmospheric Composition

Heard, Dwayne E.

doi:10.1002/9780470988510.ch1

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Once emitted into the atmosphere, NMVOCs react with the atmospheric oxidant hydroxyl radical (OH), ozone (O 3 ) and nitrate radical (NO 3 ) (Atkinson and Arey, 2003); the atmospheric lifetime of individual compounds depends on the rate of such reactions taking place during transport from the source regions, and determines the range of transport times (Heard, 2007). Longer-lived compounds can be transported on a synoptic-scale, advected by large-scale winds.…”

Section: Accepted Manuscript 2 1 mentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropogenic non-methane volatile hydrocarbons at Mt. Cimone (2165 m a.s.l., Italy): Impact of sources and transport on atmospheric composition

Vullo

Furlani

Arduini

et al. 2016

Atmospheric Environment

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To advance our understanding of the factors that affect pollution in mountainous areas, long-term, high frequency measurements of thirteen Non Methane Volatile Organic Compounds (NMVOCs) have been carried out at the atmospheric observatory on the top of Mt. Cimone (2165 m a.s.l.), whose location is ideal for sampling both aged air masses representing the regional background and polluted air masses coming from nearby sources of anthropogenic pollution.\ud \ud An analysis of the NMVOC time series available at Mt. Cimone during 2010–2014 was used to examine the influence of transport processes on NMVOC atmospheric composition and to derive information on the emission sources. We performed a multifactor principal component analysis whose results allowed us to identify the source categories emitting the NMVOCs measured at Mt. Cimone as well as to assess transport ranges in winter and summer. Aged air masses, due to long-range transport and related to vehicular traffic exhaust emissions accounted for 78% of the NMVOC variability in winter and 62% in summer, whereas evaporative emissions, likely to be associated with fresh emissions from nearby sources, accounted for 12% of the NMVOC variability and 24% in winter and summer, respectively. Such results have been confirmed by a further analysis in which the NMVOC variability as a function of their atmospheric lifetimes has been evaluated. The ratios of alkane isomers potentially provides a metric to investigate seasonal changes in NMVOCs composition and in the emission fields of butanes and pentanes, suggesting that during the summer the butanes are originating mainly from the European domain and that for pentanes non-anthropogenic sources may be contributing to the measured concentrations

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Section: Accepted Manuscript 2 1 mentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropogenic non-methane volatile hydrocarbons at Mt. Cimone (2165 m a.s.l., Italy): Impact of sources and transport on atmospheric composition

Vullo

Furlani

Arduini

et al. 2016

Atmospheric Environment

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“…The terms "quality control" and "quality assurance" have been used in meteorology in many ways (Lee et al 2004;Heard 2006). In this manuscript, the term "quality control" is used to denote the process of conducting tests to check that measurements are being made correctly and accurately, while the term "quality assurance" is the process of reviewing a data set to eliminate (replace with missing value codes) measurements that are invalid due to known problems.…”

Section: Quality Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Airborne data processing and analysis software package

Delene

2010

Earth Sci Inform

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The practice of conducting quality control and quality assurance in the construction of data sets is often an overlooked and underestimated task of many research projects in the Earth Sciences. The development of software to effectively process and quickly analyze measurements is a critical aspect of a research project. An evolutionary approach has been used at the University of North Dakota to develop and implement software to process and analyze airborne measurements. Development over the past eight years has resulted in a collection of software named the Airborne Data Processing and Analysis (ADPAA) package which has been published as an open source project on Source Forge. The ADPAA package is intended to fully automate data processing while incorporating the concept of missing value codes and levels of data processing. At each data level, ADPAA utilizes a standard ASCII file format to store measurements from individual instruments into separate files. After all data levels have been processed, a summary file containing parameters of scientific interest for the field project is created for each aircraft flight. All project information is organized into a standard directory structure. ADPAA contains several tools that facilitate quality control procedures conducted on instruments during field projects and laboratory testing. Each quality control procedure is designed to ensure proper instrument performance and hence the validity of the instrument's measurement. Data processing by ADPAA allows edit files to be created that are automatically used to insert missing value codes into a time period that had instrument problems. The creation of edit files is typically done after the completion of a field project when scientists are performing quality assurance of the data set. Since data processing is automatic, preliminary data can be created and analyzed within hours of an aircraft flight and a complete field project data set can be reprocessed many times during the quality assurance process. Once a final data set has been created, ADPAA provides several tools for visualization and analysis. In addition to aircraft data, ADPAA can be used on any data set that is based on time series measurements. The concepts illustrated by ADPAA and components of ADPAA, such as the Cplot visualization tool, are applicable to areas of Earth Science that work with time series measurements.

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“…The xylenes and ethyl-benzene are used as solvents in paints and coating (Borbon et al, 2004) and are also 0.6 emitted in vehicle exhausts (Monod et al, 2001;Lewis et al, 2013). The NMVOCs monitored at CMN are characterised by a range of different atmospheric lifetimes, which determine the extent of transport from the source region (Heard, 2007): long-lived species undergo long-range transport and short-lived species contribute to ambient levels over a much smaller domain. The more reactive species contribute to regional photochemistry near emission sources favouring the transport of air-masses rich in O 3 during summer months (Cristofanelli et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compounds in the Background Atmospheres of a Southern European Mountain Site (Mt. Cimone, Italy): Annual and Seasonal Variability

Vullo

Furlani

Arduini

et al. 2016

Aerosol Air Qual. Res.

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Since January 2010 continuous high-frequency in situ measurements of a range of anthropogenic Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compounds (NMVOCs) has been carried out at the World Meteorological Organisation Global Atmospheric Watch observatory at Mt. Cimone, on the highest peak of the Italian Northern Apennines, at the border between the Po Valley and the Mediterranean Basin. Five-year (2010Five-year ( -2014 time series of eleven NMVOCs, including aromatic and aliphatic species, have been analysed in order to derive average mixing ratios and detect annual and seasonal variability. Recent studies conducted in Europe, mainly in urban areas, have reported a decrease in atmospheric NMVOCs. Here we investigate how the decline in emissions, due to the implementation of air pollution policies, is reflected in the annual variability of NMVOC mixing ratios measured at a regional background location. Analysis of temporal trends for wellmixed conditions showed statistically significant decreases in ethyne, n-pentane and ethyl-benzene, while no significant trends were found for propane, butanes, i-pentane, toluene and xylenes. The seasonal variability of NMVOCs has been studied showing clear seasonal cycles for longer lived compounds and cycles with smaller seasonal amplitudes for shorterlived species. We used the propane time series to describe the seasonal cycle and to verify to what extent the mixing ratios of propane have been depleted by OH oxidation. We found that, during the summer, different transport times to the receptors and different source distribution are the main responsible for the relatively low integrated OH concentrations at Mt. Cimone.

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Field Masurements of Atmospheric Composition

Cited by 9 publications

References 54 publications

Anthropogenic non-methane volatile hydrocarbons at Mt. Cimone (2165 m a.s.l., Italy): Impact of sources and transport on atmospheric composition

Anthropogenic non-methane volatile hydrocarbons at Mt. Cimone (2165 m a.s.l., Italy): Impact of sources and transport on atmospheric composition

Airborne data processing and analysis software package

Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compounds in the Background Atmospheres of a Southern European Mountain Site (Mt. Cimone, Italy): Annual and Seasonal Variability

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