ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-3-417-2003 Atmospheric measurements of gas-phase HNO<sub>3</sub> and SO<sub>2</sub> using chemical ionization mass spectrometry during the MINATROC field campaign 2000 on Monte Cimone Hanke M. 1 Umann B. 1 Uecker J. 1 Arnold F. 1 Bunz H. 2 Atmospheric Physics Division, Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany Atmospheric Aerosol Research Department, Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany 03 04 2003 3 2 417 436 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. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/3/417/2003/acp-3-417-2003.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/3/417/2003/acp-3-417-2003.pdf

The EU-project MINATROC (MINeral dust And TROpospheric Chemistry) aims at enabling an estimation of the influence of mineral dust, a major, but to date largely ignored component of tropospheric aerosol, on tropospheric oxidant cycles. Within the scope of this project continuous atmospheric measurements of gas-phase HNO<sub>3</sub> and SO<sub>2</sub> were conducted in June and July 2000 at the CNR WMO station, situated on Monte Cimone (MTC) (44°11' N --10°42' E, 2165 m asl), Italy. African air transporting dust is occasionally advected over the Mediterranean Sea to the site, thus mineral aerosol emitted from Africa will encounter polluted air masses and provide ideal conditions to study their interactions. HNO<sub>3</sub> and SO<sub>2</sub> were measured with an improved CIMS (chemical ionization mass spectrometry) system for ground-based measurements that was developed and built at MPI-K Heidelberg. Since HNO<sub>3&nbsp;</sub> is a very sticky compound special care was paid for the air-sampling and background-measurement system. Complete data sets could be obtained before, during and after major dust intrusions. For the first time these measurements might provide a strong observational indication of efficient uptake of gas-phase HNO<sub>3</sub> by atmospheric mineral-dust aerosol particles.