Study of the correlation between columnar aerosol burden, suspended matter at ground and chemical components in a background European environment

Abstract

[1] Although routinely monitored by ground based air quality networks, the particulate matter distribution could be eventually better described with remote sensing techniques. However, valid relationships between ground level and columnar ground based quantities should be known beforehand. In this study we have performed a comparison between particulate matter measurements at ground level at different cut sizes (10, 2.5 and 1.0 mm), and the aerosol optical depth obtained by means of a ground based sunphotometer during a multiinstrumental field campaign held in El Arenosillo (Huelva, Spain) from 28 June to 4 July 2006. All the PM fractions were very well correlated with AOD with correlation coefficients that ranged from 0.71 to 0.81 for PM10, PM2.5 and PM1. Furthermore, the influence of the mixing layer height in the correlations was explored. The improvement in the correlation when the vertical distribution is taken into account was significant for days with a homogeneous mixing layer. Moreover, the chemical analysis of the individual size fractions allowed us to study the origin of the particulate matter. Secondary components were the most abundant and also well correlated in the three size fractions; but for PM10 fraction, chemical species related to marine origin were best correlated. Finally, we obtained a relationship between MODIS L3 AOD from collection 5.1 and the three PM cut sizes. In spite of being a relatively clean environment, all the techniques were able to capture similar day to day variations during this field campaign.

Columnar and surface aerosol load over the Iberian Peninsula establishing annual cycles, trends, and relationships in five geographical sectors

“…This fact is also noticeable in our results. Using a 7-day campaign in summer 2006 at El Arenosillo site (SW Iberian sector), Estellés et al (2012) found a correlation about 0.9 for daily mean values between AOD (500 nm) and PM 10 . Gan et al (2014) looked for a relationship between AOD and PM 2.5 anomaly, finding correlation coefficients of 0.71 and 0.58 in the Eastern and Western US.…”

Long-term comparative study of columnar and surface mass concentration aerosol properties in a background environment

“…In the last decades national and international institutions have set limits and guide values for the concentration of various PM size fractions with the aim to protect public health and environment (Delucchi et al, 2002;WHO 2006;EC, 1999EC, , 2008. Although so far this objective has not been universally achieved (Füssel and Jol, 2012), decreasing trends in yearly average have been observed in many European countries (EMEP, 2011(EMEP, ,2014Tørseth et al, 2012;Cusack et al, 2012;Boucher et al, 2013;Querol et al, 2014). These reductions are certainly attributed in a great part to the application of these abatement strategies of air pollution (EMEP, 2014).…”

A critical assessment of high-resolution aerosol optical depth retrievals for fine particulate matter predictions

“…information such as meteorological data (Pelletier et al, 2007;Emili et al, 2010;Wu et al, 2012;Kanabkaew, 2013) and boundary layer height (Engel-Cox et al, 2006;Tsai et al, 2011;Estellés et al, 2012), and also employs light detection and ranging (lidar) instruments to capture the vertical aerosol distribution at specific locations (Schaap et al, 2009;Barnaba et al, 2010). These recently developed approaches use various statistical methods, from linear regression models (Wang and Christopher, 2003;Tian and Chen, 2010) to more complex multiple regression and neural network techniques (Gupta and Christopher, 2009a, b), generalized additive mixed models (GAMs) (Liu et al, 2009;Paciorek et al, 2008;Paciorek and Liu, 2012), and mixed effects models Chudnovsky et al, 2012).…”