Influence of Local Sources and Meteorological Parameters on the Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Ultrafine Particles in Augsburg, Germany

Abstract

Ultrafine particles (UFP; diameter less than 100 nm) are ubiquitous in urban air, and an acknowledged risk to human health. At the same time, little is known about the immission situation at typical urban sites such as high-traffic roads, residential areas with a high amount of solid fuels for home heating or commercial and industrial areas due to missing legal requirements for measurements of UFP. Therefore, UFP were measured and evaluated in the (sub-)urban background as well as on spots influenced by these various anthropogenic local sources in the city of Augsburg, Germany, for the year 2017. In particular, the spatial and temporal correlations of the UFP concentrations between the seven measurement sites, the quantification and valuation of the contribution of local emitters with regard to their diurnal, weekly and seasonal variations and the influence of meteorological conditions on the formation and dispersion of UFP were investigated. Our analysis results demonstrate that urban UFP concentrations show a pronounced temporal and spatial variability. The mean concentration level of UFP varies between below 8,000 ultrafine particles/cm3 at the suburban background site and above 16,700 ultrafine particles/cm3 at the measurement station located next to a busy street canyon. At this particularly traffic-exposed measurement station, maximum concentrations of over 50,000 ultrafine particles/cm3 were measured. The additional UFP load caused by intensive traffic volume during evening rush hour in connection with the unfavourable exchange processes in the street canyon can be quantified to concentrations of 14,000 ultrafine particles/cm3 on average (compared to the immission situation of the urban background). An aggravating effect is brought about by inversion weather conditions in connection with air-polluted easterly winds, low wind speeds, lack of precipitation and very low mixing layer heights, such as over Augsburg at the end of January 2017, and cause peak concentrations of UFP.

Indoor and Outdoor Nanoparticle Concentrations in an Urban Background Area in Northern Sweden: The NanoOffice Study

“…This might partly explain the relatively high concentrations of small particles (10-30 nm) measured indoors. The effect of low wind speeds and very low mixing layer heights on UFP dispersion has been discussed by Giemsa et al [68].…”

Source Contribution of Firecrackers Burst vs. Long-Range Transport of Biomass Burning Emissions Over an Urban Background

“…O 3 , CNC, PM 2.5 , and SB-PAHs. The details of PM 2.5 data set can be found elsewhere (Rajput and Gupta, 2020). Briefly, the hourly averaged data set was segregated into 3-different bins corresponding to UB (urban background), UB+FC+BB (urban background+firecrackers burst+biomass burning contribution), and UB+BB (urban background+biomass burning contribution) depending on their association with wind profile and information on FC burst (on Diwali).…”

“…TrajStat was utilized for the air-mass cluster analysis (Figure 3). The cluster analysis is a widely used tool to understand the influence of cluster of trajectories on ambient level of air pollutants at the receptor site (Bansal et al, 2019;Rajput and Gupta, 2020). Briefly, in the cluster analysis method, the measured air pollutant concentrations are assigned to the corresponding trajectories and the nearest trajectories are clustered according to an angle distance function (Sirois and Bottenheim, 1995).…”

“…Another study from a downwind location at Jamshedpur has documented PM and trace gases concentrations around Diwali period in 2014 (Ambade, 2018). From a further downwind location at Kolkata in IGP, a study has reported lots of species including metals, ionic composition in PM 10 and SO 2 around Diwali period $ For details on PM 2.5 data set, the reference is made to our recent publication (Rajput and Gupta, 2020). in 2010 (Chatterjee et al, 2013).…”

“…Besides the characterization and impact of primary species (Menon et al, 2002;Ramana et al, 2010;Andreae and Ramanathan, 2013;Sahu et al, 2017;Satish and Rastogi, 2019), there has been a deep interest globally in looking at the features pertaining to chemical transformations occuring under ambient atmospheric conditions (Perraudin et al, 2007;Rudich et al, 2007;Kaiser et al, 2011;George et al, 2015;Nguyen et al, 2016;Pöhlker et al, 2018;Rajput et al, 2018;Rajput and Gupta, 2020). For example, a recent study assesses the secondary organic aerosols (SOA) formation due to ozone utlizing the instrumental variable analysis (IVA) (Rajput and Gupta, 2020). In fact, many studies have focussed on the atmospheric reactivity and health impacts of several types of organic compounds including the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) (Ackerman et al, 1994;Maria et al, 2004;Che et al, 2016;Ruehl et al, 2016;Singh and Gupta, 2016;Agarwal et al, 2018).…”