Abstract
Abstract. Biomass burning activities are ubiquitous in China, especially in northern China, where there is a large rural population and winter heating custom. Biomass burning tracers (i.e., levoglucosan, mannosan and potassium (K+)), as well as other chemical components, were quantified at a rural site (Gucheng, GC) in northern China from 15 October to 30 November, during a transition heating season, when the field burning of agricultural residue was becoming intense. The measured daily average concentrations of levoglucosan, mannosan and K+ in PM2.5 (particulate matter with aerodynamic diameters less than 2.5 µm) during this study were 0.79 ± 0.75, 0.03 ± 0.03 and 1.52 ± 0.62 µg m−3, respectively. Carbonaceous components and biomass burning tracers showed higher levels during nighttime than daytime, while secondary inorganic ions were enhanced during daytime. An episode with high levels of biomass burning tracers was encountered at the end of October 2016, with high levoglucosan at 4.37 µg m−3. Based on the comparison of chemical components during different biomass burning pollution periods, it appeared that biomass combustion can obviously elevate carbonaceous component levels, whereas there was essentially no effect on secondary inorganic aerosols in the ambient air. Moreover, the levoglucosan / mannosan ratios during different biomass burning pollution periods remained at high values (in the range of 18.3–24.9); however, the levoglucosan / K+ ratio was significantly elevated during the intensive biomass burning pollution period (1.67) when air temperatures were decreasing, which was substantially higher than in other biomass burning periods (averaged at 0.47).
Highlights
Particulate air pollution is attracting more and more concern in China because of its obvious adverse impact on visibility reduction, as well as health implications and regional or global climate change (Kanakidou et al, 2005; Pope and Dockery, 2006; Cheng et al, 2016)
Chi et al (2018) found NO−3 concentrations exceeded those of SO24− at both the Beijing and GC sites during the winter in 2016, they observed that NH+4 was the dominant component of SNA
Anhydrosugars, including levoglucosan and mannosan, and water-soluble potassium ions were employed as molecular tracers to investigate the characteristics of biomass burning activities as well as chemical properties of ambient aerosols under different biomass burning pollution levels
Summary
Particulate air pollution is attracting more and more concern in China because of its obvious adverse impact on visibility reduction, as well as health implications and regional or global climate change (Kanakidou et al, 2005; Pope and Dockery, 2006; Cheng et al, 2016). Carbonaceous species, i.e., organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC), and water-soluble inorganic ions, e.g., SO24−, NO−3 and NH+4 , are the major components of ambient aerosols (Liang et al, 2017; Du et al, 2014; Zheng et al, 2015; Tan et al, 2016). Biomass burning (BB) emissions constitute a large source of ambient particulate pollution, especially for carbonaceous components, i.e., primary organic carbon (POC) and black carbon (BC) on a global scale (Bond et al, 2004; Tang et al, 2018). Fresh biomass burning aerosol was found to be mainly comprised of carbonaceous species which typically constitute 50 %– 60 % of the total particle mass (Hallquist et al, 2009). Fresh biomass burning aerosol was found to be mainly comprised of carbonaceous species which typically constitute 50 %– 60 % of the total particle mass (Hallquist et al, 2009). Yao et al (2016) identified approximately half of carbonaceous aerosols being contributed by biomass burning at Yucheng, a rural site in the North China Plain
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