Carbonaceous Aerosol

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2020) | Viewed by 12299

Special Issue Editor


E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA
Interests: metrology, atmospheric chemistry and physics, aerosol optical properties, aerosol instrumentation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Atmosphere aims to present recent laboratory, field, or computational studies of carbonaceous aerosols, with a specific emphasis on developments and achievements in metrology. Carbonaceous aerosols, broadly defined, are any atmospherically relevant aerosol that is carbon-based and not biogenic in origin. These particles possess a wide range of chemistries (organic to elemental), sizes (nanometers to tens of micrometers) and morphologies (spherical to lacey or compacted aggregates with and without coatings) that impact radiative forcing, the hydrological cycle, and human health. The nuances to these complexities are only starting to be understood, as a direct result of advances in aerosol metrology.

Submitted articles should address carbonaceous aerosols, with an emphasis on aerosol metrology (measurement science). This emphasis can take the form of novel instrumentation; methods or materials development for instrument inter-comparison, calibration, or validation; novel data analysis methods that provide additional insights into aerosol processes; or computational studies that validate observations or measurements. Last, and of specific interest, are studies that address the divide between field and laboratory measurements of absorption enhancement (colloquially referred to as “lensing”), or lack thereof, by strongly absorbing carbonaceous aerosols (i.e., black carbon) that are coated and/or embedded in both absorbing and non-absorbing materials.

Cheers,

Dr. James G. Radney
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Carbonaceous aerosol
  • Black carbon
  • Absorption enhancement
  • Core-shell
  • Aerosol metrology
  • Aerosol instrumentation

Published Papers (4 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

21 pages, 1818 KiB  
Article
An Exploratory Approach Using Regression and Machine Learning in the Analysis of Mass Absorption Cross Section of Black Carbon Aerosols: Model Development and Evaluation
by Hanyang Li and Andrew A. May
Atmosphere 2020, 11(11), 1185; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111185 - 2 Nov 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3216
Abstract
Mass absorption cross-section of black carbon (MACBC) describes the absorptive cross-section per unit mass of black carbon, and is, thus, an essential parameter to estimate the radiative forcing of black carbon. Many studies have sought to estimate MACBC from a [...] Read more.
Mass absorption cross-section of black carbon (MACBC) describes the absorptive cross-section per unit mass of black carbon, and is, thus, an essential parameter to estimate the radiative forcing of black carbon. Many studies have sought to estimate MACBC from a theoretical perspective, but these studies require the knowledge of a set of aerosol properties, which are difficult and/or labor-intensive to measure. We therefore investigate the ability of seven data analytical approaches (including different multivariate regressions, support vector machine, and neural networks) in predicting MACBC for both ambient and biomass burning measurements. Our model utilizes multi-wavelength light absorption and scattering as well as the aerosol size distributions as input variables to predict MACBC across different wavelengths. We assessed the applicability of the proposed approaches in estimating MACBC using different statistical metrics (such as coefficient of determination (R2), mean square error (MSE), fractional error, and fractional bias). Overall, the approaches used in this study can estimate MACBC appropriately, but the prediction performance varies across approaches and atmospheric environments. Based on an uncertainty evaluation of our models and the empirical and theoretical approaches to predict MACBC, we preliminarily put forth support vector machine (SVM) as a recommended data analytical technique for use. We provide an operational tool built with the approaches presented in this paper to facilitate this procedure for future users. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Carbonaceous Aerosol)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

8 pages, 12497 KiB  
Article
Detection of Aerosol Particles from Siberian Biomass Burning over the Western North Pacific
by Momoka Yoshizue, Fumikazu Taketani, Kouji Adachi, Yoko Iwamoto, Yasunori Tohjima, Tatsuhiro Mori and Kazuhiko Miura
Atmosphere 2020, 11(11), 1175; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11111175 - 30 Oct 2020
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2286
Abstract
Carbonaceous aerosol particles emitted from biomass burning (BB) have a large impact on the global climate. In particular, tarball particles (TBs), which are spherical organic aerosol particles, account for a large proportion of aerosol particles from BB. In this study, we collected aerosol [...] Read more.
Carbonaceous aerosol particles emitted from biomass burning (BB) have a large impact on the global climate. In particular, tarball particles (TBs), which are spherical organic aerosol particles, account for a large proportion of aerosol particles from BB. In this study, we collected aerosol particles over the western North Pacific and analyzed them using transmission electron microscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (TEM-EDX) to reveal their shape and composition. We detected TBs and organic carbon particles originating from Siberian forest fires. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case in which a large number of TBs have been found over the Pacific Ocean far from the BB source. The spherical shapes of the TBs were maintained even after long-range transport. In addition, our individual analysis of TBs showed that the size and composition of TBs differ depending on the air mass origin. The occurrence and microphysical properties of TBs are important to accurately evaluate the impact of TBs on climate. Our results imply that TBs can be transported to the Arctic and have an influence on radiative forcing over the ocean and in the Arctic. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Carbonaceous Aerosol)
Show Figures

Figure 1

25 pages, 1591 KiB  
Article
The Ångström Exponent and Single-Scattering Albedo of Black Carbon: Effects of Different Coating Materials
by Jie Luo, Yongming Zhang and Qixing Zhang
Atmosphere 2020, 11(10), 1103; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11101103 - 15 Oct 2020
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3608
Abstract
In this work, the absorption Ångström exponent (AAE), extinction Ångström exponent (EAE), and single-scattering albedo (SSA) of black carbon (BC) with different coating materials are numerically investigated. BC with different coating materials can provide explanations for the small AAE, small EAE, and large [...] Read more.
In this work, the absorption Ångström exponent (AAE), extinction Ångström exponent (EAE), and single-scattering albedo (SSA) of black carbon (BC) with different coating materials are numerically investigated. BC with different coating materials can provide explanations for the small AAE, small EAE, and large AAE observed in the atmosphere, which is difficult to be explained by bare BC aggregate models. The addition of organic carbon (OC) does not necessarily increase AAE due to the transformation of BC morphologies and the existence of non-absorbing OC. The addition of coating materials does also not necessarily decrease EAE. While the addition of coating materials can increase the total size of BC-containing particles, the effective refractive index can be modified by introducing the coating materials, so increases the EAE. We found that it is not possible to differentiate between thinly- and heavily-coated BC based on EAE or AAE alone. On the other hand, SSA is much less sensitive to the size and can provide much more information for distinguishing heavily-coated BC from thinly-coated BC. For BC with different coating materials and mixing states, AAE, EAE, and SSA show rather different sensitivities to particle size and composition ratios, and their spectral-dependences also exhibit distinct differences. Different AAE and EAE trends with BC/OC ratio were also found for BC with different coating materials and mixing states. Furthermore, we also found empirical fittings for AAE, EAE, SSA, and optical cross-sections, which may be useful for retrieving the size information based on the optical measurements. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Carbonaceous Aerosol)
Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 3547 KiB  
Article
Influence of Ammonium Sulfate Seed Particle on Optics and Compositions of Toluene Derived Organic Aerosol in Photochemistry
by Tingting Lu, Mingqiang Huang, Weixiong Zhao, Changjin Hu, Xuejun Gu and Weijun Zhang
Atmosphere 2020, 11(9), 961; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11090961 - 10 Sep 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2761
Abstract
Aromatic secondary organic aerosol (SOA) particles are known to contribute to radiative forcing and light absorption of atmosphere. However, the complex refractive index (CRI), single-scattering albedo (SSA) and other optical parameters of aromatic SOA are not well understood. SOA generated from photooxidation of [...] Read more.
Aromatic secondary organic aerosol (SOA) particles are known to contribute to radiative forcing and light absorption of atmosphere. However, the complex refractive index (CRI), single-scattering albedo (SSA) and other optical parameters of aromatic SOA are not well understood. SOA generated from photooxidation of toluene with a variety concentration of ammonium sulfate ((NH4)2SO4) seed particles in a smog chamber were investigated in the current study. The real part CRI of toluene SOA without seeds derived and based on aerosol albedometer measurements is 1.486 ± 0.002 at λ = 470 nm, showing a good agreement with available experimental data, and its SSA was measured to be 0.92 ± 0.02 at λ = 470 nm, indicating that the SOA particles without seeds have strong scattering ability. The SSA of SOA formed in the presence of 300 μg/m3 (NH4)2SO4 seed was 0.81 ± 0.02 at λ = 470 nm, less than the SSA of SOA without seed. SSA of SOA decreased, while the imaginary part of CRI (k) of SOA increased with increasing concentration of (NH4)2SO4 seed, demonstrating that the adsorption capacity of SOA formed in the presence of (NH4)2SO4 seed is enhanced. Different from the carboxyl compounds measured in the SOA without seed, imidazoles with strong chromophores of C=N that are responsible for the light absorption were detected as the principal constituents of SOA formed in the presence of (NH4)2SO4 seed. These would provide valuable information for discussing the optics and components of aromatic SOA in the urban atmosphere containing a high concentration of (NH4)2SO4 fine particles. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Carbonaceous Aerosol)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop