References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-8-2729-2008

Weekly patterns of aerosol in the United States

Murphy

D. M.

¹ Capps

S. L.

¹ ² ⁵ Daniel

J. S.

¹ Frost

G. J.

¹ ³ White

W. H.

⁴

Earth System Research Laboratory, Chemical Sciences Division, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Boulder, CO 80305, USA

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37240, USA

Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309, USA

Crocker Nuclear Laboratory, University of California, Davis Davis, CA 95616, USA

now at: School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA

22 05 2008

8 10 2729 2739

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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Data from the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) network of aerosol samplers and NOAA monitoring sites are examined for weekly cycles. At remote and rural sites, fine particle elemental carbon, crustal elements, and coarse particle mass had pronounced (up to 20%) weekly cycles with minima on Sunday or Monday. Fine particle organic carbon and mass had smaller amplitude cycles, also with Sunday or Monday minima. There was no statistically significant weekly cycle in fine particle sulfate despite a 5 to 15% weekly cycle in power plant SO<sub>2</sub> emissions. Although results for nitrate may be more susceptible to sampling artifacts, nitrate also showed a pronounced weekly cycle with an amplitude similar to elemental carbon. The only species found with a weekend maximum was Pb, probably from general aviation on weekends. Aerosol optical properties at NOAA monitoring sites were consistent with the IMPROVE chemical data, with significant weekly cycles in aerosol light absorption but not light scattering. These results support a large role of diesel emissions in elemental carbon aerosol over the entire United States and suggest that a large fraction of the airborne soil dust is anthropogenic. They also suggest that studies of weekly cycles in temperature, cloudiness, precipitation, or other meteorological variables should look for causes more in light-absorbing particles and possible ice nucleation by dust rather than sulfate or total aerosol. There are also implications for personal exposure and epidemiological studies of aerosol health effects.

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