Observations of residual submicron fine aerosol particles related to cloud and fog processing during a major pollution event in Beijing

Abstract

Residual aerosols, the particles left behind after droplet evaporation, are important tracers for aerosols processed by cloud and/or fog. Based on ground-based CIMEL sun–sky radiometer measurements during an extreme winter pollution event in Beijing, we present observations of the decrease of residual aerosol with dissipation of cloud and an unusual case of residual aerosol increase after partial dissipation of fog. This unusual increase might be an important mechanism for the haze growth in polluted regions. The aerosol single scattering albedo is found to increase with the increase of residual aerosol. We also find that residual aerosol dominated cases with significant water content gain can occur in a short time (e.g. one hour) with the increase of aerosol volume size and decrease of particle number. A lognormal residual aerosol size distribution model is proposed based on sun–sky radiometer measurements with center peak radius at 0.44 micron and geometric standard deviation of about 1.49.