Air Quality and Secondary Organic Aerosols: Recent Trends, Current Progress and Future Directions

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Air Quality".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 October 2022) | Viewed by 6430

Special Issue Editors

Institute for Research on Catalysis and the Environment of Lyon (IRCELYON), French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), 69626 Villeurbanne, France
Interests: atmospheric chemistry; aerosol sources and properties; air quality; O3 pollution; aerosol mass spectrometry; chemical mechanism development; SOA formation; air-water interface

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Guest Editor
Department of Atmospheric Science, School of Environmental Studies, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Interests: air quality; atmospheric measurements; new particle formation; mass spectrometry; aerosol physics and chemistry; atmospheric chemistry

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Guest Editor
Institute for Research on Catalysis and the Environment of Lyon (IRCELYON), French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), 69626 Villeurbanne, France
Interests: atmospheric chemistry; air quality; surface reaction; heterogeneous chemistry; photochemistry; aerosols; ultrafine particles; pollution; air-sea interactions

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Air pollution has become one of the most challenging issues on this planet, which significantly affects our environment, climate, and public health. In many places worldwide, great efforts have been made through emission reductions to improve air quality. However, according to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, 9 out of 10 people still breathe air that contains high levels of harmful pollutants (e.g., fine particles and ozone). Among the incredible variety of air pollutants, secondary organic aerosol (SOA) is certainly one of the most complex objects, arising from diverse chemical processes involving both anthropogenic and biogenic compounds and carrying a large number of uncertainties. Though recent advances in measurement techniques have achieved to provide more detailed physical and chemical information during SOA formation, the fundamental understanding of sources and evolution of SOA in the atmosphere is still far from complete, which in turn further limits the development of effective control strategy for air pollution mitigation.

This Special Issue welcome original research studies, review and perspective articles related to air quality and SOA formation, covering laboratory experiments, field measurements, and modeling aspects. Relevant topics include but are not limited to:

(1) Influence of meteorology and emission reduction on local and regional air quality;

(2) Source apportionment and air pollution control strategy;

(3) Characterization of aerosol physical and chemical properties;

(4) SOA formation mechanism such as gas-phase oxidation, aging, aqueous, and multiphase chemical processes;

(5) Interaction between anthropogenic and biogenic emissions.

Dr. Kangwei Li
Prof. Dr. Huan Yu
Prof. Dr. Christian George
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  •  air quality
  •  PM2.5
  •  source apportionment
  •  O3 chemistry
  •  SOA formation
  •  air pollution control
  •  aerosol physico–chemical properties

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

27 pages, 17254 KiB  
Article
Black Carbon Emissions, Transport and Effect on Radiation Forcing Modelling during the Summer 2019–2020 Wildfires in Southeast Australia
by Hiep Nguyen Duc, Merched Azzi, Yang Zhang, John Kirkwood, Stephen White, Toan Trieu, Matthew Riley, David Salter, Lisa Tzu-Chi Chang, Jordan Capnerhurst, Joseph Ho, Gunaratnam Gunashanhar and Khalia Monk
Atmosphere 2023, 14(4), 699; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14040699 - 10 Apr 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2173
Abstract
The emission of black carbon (BC) particles, which cause atmospheric warming by affecting radiation budget in the atmosphere, is the result of an incomplete combustion process of organic materials. The recent wildfire event during the summer 2019–2020 in south-eastern Australia was unprecedented in [...] Read more.
The emission of black carbon (BC) particles, which cause atmospheric warming by affecting radiation budget in the atmosphere, is the result of an incomplete combustion process of organic materials. The recent wildfire event during the summer 2019–2020 in south-eastern Australia was unprecedented in scale. The wildfires lasted for nearly 3 months over large areas of the two most populated states of New South Wales and Victoria. This study on the emission and dispersion of BC emitted from the biomass burnings of the wildfires using the Weather Research Forecast–Chemistry (WRF–Chem) model aims to determine the extent of BC spatial dispersion and ground concentration distribution and the effect of BC on air quality and radiative transfer at the top of the atmosphere, the atmosphere and on the ground. The predicted aerosol concentration and AOD are compared with the observed data using the New South Wales Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) aethalometer and air quality network and remote sensing data. The BC concentration as predicted from the WRF–Chem model, is in general, less than the observed data as measured using the aethalometer monitoring network, but the spatial pattern corresponds well, and the correlation is relatively high. The total BC emission into the atmosphere during the event and the effect on radiation budget were also estimated. This study shows that the summer 2019–2020 wildfires affect not only the air quality and health impact on the east coast of Australia but also short-term weather in the region via aerosol interactions with radiation and clouds. Full article
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16 pages, 1313 KiB  
Article
Implementing Machine Learning Algorithms to Predict Particulate Matter (PM2.5): A Case Study in the Paso del Norte Region
by Suhail Mahmud, Tasannum Binte Islam Ridi, Mohammad Sujan Miah, Farhana Sarower and Sanjida Elahee
Atmosphere 2022, 13(12), 2100; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13122100 - 14 Dec 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2169
Abstract
This work focuses on the prediction of an air pollutant called particulate matter (PM2.5) across the Paso Del Norte region. Outdoor air pollution causes millions of premature deaths every year, mostly due to anthropogenic fine PM2.5. In addition, the [...] Read more.
This work focuses on the prediction of an air pollutant called particulate matter (PM2.5) across the Paso Del Norte region. Outdoor air pollution causes millions of premature deaths every year, mostly due to anthropogenic fine PM2.5. In addition, the prediction of ground-level PM2.5 is challenging, as it behaves randomly over time and does not follow the interannual variability. To maintain a healthy environment, it is essential to predict the PM2.5 value with great accuracy. We used different supervised machine learning algorithms based on regression and classification to accurately predict the daily PM2.5 values. In this study, several meteorological and atmospheric variables were retrieved from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality’s monitoring stations corresponding to 2014–2019. These variables were analyzed by six different machine learning algorithms with various evaluation metrics. The results demonstrate that ML models effectively detect the effect of other variables on PM2.5 and can predict the data accurately, identifying potentially risky territory. With an accuracy of 92%, random forest performs the best out of all machine learning models. Full article
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15 pages, 3100 KiB  
Article
Seasonal Variation of Aerosol Composition and Sources of Water-Soluble Organic Carbon in an Eastern City of China
by Jiameng Li, Linghong Chen, Zhier Bao, Xin Zhang, Huifeng Xu, Xiang Gao and Kefa Cen
Atmosphere 2022, 13(12), 1968; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13121968 - 25 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1477
Abstract
The mitigation of aerosol pollution is a great challenge in many cities in China, due to the complex sources and formation mechanism of particulate matter (PM) in different seasons. To understand the particular features of pollution in China and formulate different targeted policies, [...] Read more.
The mitigation of aerosol pollution is a great challenge in many cities in China, due to the complex sources and formation mechanism of particulate matter (PM) in different seasons. To understand the particular features of pollution in China and formulate different targeted policies, aerosol samples of PM2.5 were collected from January to October of 2018 in Longyou. The temporal profile of the meteorological parameters and the concentrations of water-soluble inorganic ions (WSIs) and organic matter (OM) were characterized. An Aerodyne High-Resolution Time-of-Flight Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (HR-TOF-AMS) was also applied to further analyze the composition of water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC). The sources of WSOC were resolved by positive matrix factorization (PMF) analysis. The origin of air parcels and potential sources of WSOC were analyzed using a backward trajectory and potential source contribution function (PSCF). Winds from the northeast dominated each sampling period, and the relative humidity did not show a significant difference. The results showed that the proportion of OM in PM2.5 was the highest in summer and decreased in spring, autumn, and winter in turn. Four organic aerosol (OA) factors, including a hydrocarbon-like factor, a coal combustion factor, and two oxygenated OA factors, were identified in the WSOC by means of PMF analysis. The hydrocarbon-like OA (HOA) contributed the majority of the WSOC in summer, while the contribution of the coal-combustion OA (CCOA) increased significantly in winter, suggesting the presence of different sources of WSOC in different seasons. The air parcels from the north of China and Zhejiang province contributed to the CCOA in winter, while those from the marine regions in the south and southeast of China mainly contributed to the HOA during spring and summer. The weighted PSCF (WPSCF) analysis showed that the regions of east Zhejiang province were the main contributors, which means that local and regional emissions were the most probable source areas of WSOC. It implied that not only were the emissions control of both local and regional emissions important but also that the transport of pollutants needed to be sufficiently well accounted for to ensure the successful implementation of air pollution mitigation in Longyou. Full article
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