References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-10-7241-2010

Aerosol measurements at the Gual Pahari EUCAARI station: preliminary results from in-situ measurements

Hyvärinen

A.-P.

¹ Lihavainen

¹ Komppula

¹ ² Panwar

T. S.

³ Sharma

V. P.

³ Hooda

R. K.

³ Viisanen

Finnish Meteorological Institute, Erik Palménin aukio 1, P.O. Box 503, 00101, Helsinki, Finland

Finnish Meteorological Institute, Yliopistonranta 1F, P.O. Box 1627, 70211 Kuopio, Finland

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Darbari Seth Block, IHC Complex, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110 003, India

06 08 2010

10 15 7241 7252

This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/7241/2010/acp-10-7241-2010.pdf

The Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), together with The Energy and Resources Institute of India (TERI), contributed to the European Integrated project on Aerosol Cloud Climate and Air Quality Interactions, EUCAARI, by conducting aerosol measurements in Gual Pahari, India, from December 2007 to January 2010. This paper describes the station setup in detail for the first time and provides results from the aerosol in-situ measurements, which include PM and BCe masses, aerosol size distribution from 4 nm to 10 μm, and the scattering and absorption coefficients. The seasonal variation of the aerosol characteristics was very distinct in Gual Pahari. The highest concentrations were observed during the winter and the lowest during the rainy season. The average PM10 concentration (at STP conditions) was 216 μgm−3 and the average PM2.5 concentration was 126 μgm−3. A high percentage (4–9%) of the PM10 mass consisted of BCe which indicates anthropogenic influence. The percentage of BCe was higher during the winter; and according to the diurnal pattern of the BCe fraction, the peak occurred during active traffic hours. Another important source of aerosol particles in the area was new particle formation. The nucleated particles grew rapidly reaching the Aitken and accumulation mode size, thus contributing considerably to the aerosol load. The rainy season decreased the average fraction of particle mass in the PM2.5 size range, i.e. of secondary origin. The other mechanism decreasing the surface concentrations was based on convective mixing and boundary layer evolution. This diluted the aerosol when sun radiation and the temperature was high, i.e. especially during the pre-monsoon day time. The lighter and smaller particles were more effectively diluted.

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