Critical review of black carbon and elemental carbon source apportionment in Europe and the United States

Abstract

An increasing number of air pollution source apportionment studies in Europe and the United States have focused on the black carbon (BC) fraction of ambient particulate matter (PM) given its linkage with adverse public health and climate impacts. We conducted a critical review of European and US BC source apportionment studies published since 2003. Since elemental carbon (EC) has been used as a surrogate measure of BC, we also considered source apportionment studies of EC measurements. This review extends the knowledge presented in previous ambient PM source apportionment reviews because we focus on BC and EC and critically examine the differences between source apportionment results for different methods and source categories. We identified about 50 BC and EC source apportionment studies that have been conducted in either Europe or the US since 2003, finding a striking difference in the commonly used source apportionment methods between the two regions and variations in the assigned source categories. Using three dominant methodologies (radiocarbon, aethalometer, and macro-tracer methods) that only allow for BC to be broadly apportioned into either fossil fuel combustion or biomass burning source categories, European studies generally support fossil fuel combustion as the dominant ambient BC source, but also show significant biomass burning contributions, in particular in wintertime at non-urban locations. Among US studies where prevailing methods such as chemical mass balance (CMB) and positive matrix factorization (PMF) models have allowed for estimation of more refined source contributions, there are fewer findings showing the significance of biomass burning and variable findings on the relative proportion of BC attributed to diesel versus gasoline emissions. Overall, the available BC source apportionment studies provide useful information demonstrating the significance of both fossil fuel combustion and biomass burning BC emission sources in Europe and the US, although further studies are needed to evaluate the uncertainties and comparability of the methodologies.