References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-6-3563-2006

Optical properties of humic-like substances (HULIS) in biomass-burning aerosols

Hoffer

¹ ⁴ Gelencsér

² Guyon

¹ Kiss

² Schmid

¹ ⁵ Frank

G. P.

¹ Artaxo

³ Andreae

M. O.

Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Department of Biogeochemistry, Mainz, Germany

Air Chemistry Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Veszprém, Hungary

Instituto de Fisica, Universidade de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

now at: Air Chemistry Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Veszprém, Hungary

now at: GSF – Research Center for Environment and Health, Institute for Inhalation Biology, Neuherberg/Munich, Germany

30 08 2006

6 11 3563 3570

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/6/3563/2006/acp-6-3563-2006.pdf

We present here the optical properties of humic-like substances (HULIS) isolated from the fine fraction of biomass-burning aerosol collected in the Amazon basin during the LBA-SMOCC (Large scale Biosphere atmosphere experiment in Amazonia – SMOke aerosols, Clouds, rainfall and Climate) experiment in September 2002. From the isolated HULIS, aerosol particles were generated and their scattering and absorption coefficients measured. The size distribution and mass of the particles were also recorded. The value of the index of refraction was derived from "closure" calculations based on particle size, scattering and absorption measurements. On average, the complex index of refraction at 532 nm of HULIS collected during day and nighttime was 1.65–0.0019i and 1.69–0.0016i, respectively. In addition, the imaginary part of the complex index of refraction was calculated using the measured absorption coefficient of the bulk HULIS. The mass absorption coefficient of the HULIS at 532 nm was found to be quite low (0.031 and 0.029 m2 g−1 for the day and night samples, respectively). However, due to the high absorption Ångström exponent (6–7) of HULIS, the specific absorption increases substantially towards shorter wavelengths (~2–3 m2 g−1 at 300 nm), causing a relatively high (up to 50%) contribution to the light absorption of our Amazonian aerosol at 300 nm. For the relative contribution of HULIS to light absorption in the entire solar spectrum, lower values (6.4–8.6%) are obtained, but those are still not negligible.

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