Abstract
Abstract. In May 2008 the EUCAARI-LONGREX aircraft field campaign was conducted within the EUCAARI intensive observational period. The campaign aimed at studying the distribution and evolution of air mass properties on a continental scale. Airborne aerosol and trace gas measurements were performed aboard the German DLR Falcon 20 and the British FAAM BAe-146 aircraft. This paper outlines the meteorological situation over Europe during May 2008 and the temporal and spatial evolution of predominantly anthropogenic particulate pollution inside the boundary layer and the free troposphere. Time series data of six selected ground stations are used to discuss continuous measurements besides the single flights. The observations encompass total and accumulation mode particle number concentration (0.1–0.8 μm) and black carbon mass concentration as well as several meteorological parameters. Vertical profiles of total aerosol number concentration up to 10 km are compared to vertical profiles probed during previous studies. During the first half of May 2008 an anticyclonic blocking event dominated the weather over Central Europe. It led to increased pollutant concentrations within the centre of the high pressure inside the boundary layer. Due to long-range transport the accumulated pollution was partly advected towards Western and Northern Europe. The measured aerosol number concentrations over Central Europe showed in the boundary layer high values up to 14 000 cm−3 for particles in diameter larger 10 nm and 2300 cm−3 for accumulation mode particles during the high pressure period, whereas the middle free troposphere showed rather low concentrations of particulates. Thus a strong negative gradient of aerosol concentrations between the well mixed boundary layer and the clean middle troposphere occurred.
Highlights
The European integrated project on Aerosol Cloud Climate and Air Quality Interactions (EUCAARI) project focuses on understanding the interactions of climate and air pollution (Kulmala et al, 2009)
In May 2008 the EUCAARI-LONGREX aircraft field campaign was conducted within the EUCAARI intensive observational period
This paper presents an overview of the meteorological conditions (Sect. 3) combined with a survey of the temporal evolution and spatial distribution of anthropogenic particulate pollution over Europe during this aircraft campaign
Summary
The European integrated project on Aerosol Cloud Climate and Air Quality Interactions (EUCAARI) project focuses on understanding the interactions of climate and air pollution (Kulmala et al, 2009). The aircraft campaign aimed for the following objectives: mapping of tropospheric aerosol over Europe, observation of gradients in aerosol properties from clean to polluted air masses and the transitions between industrial dominated and agricultural dominated regions, air mass evolution and transformation during long-range transport, and linking of airborne to ground based measurements by intensive profiling over EUSAAR (European Supersites for Atmospheric Aerosol Research) super-sites. Several long term studies investigated the impact of meteorological conditions and different air mass transport paths on local aerosol properties at ground based measurement sites (e.g., Birmili et al, 2001; Tunved et al, 2005). The accumulation mode is the dominant mode in the region of central European cities (Berner et al, 2004) and high accumulation mode particle concentrations at rural locations indicate long-range transport of polluted continental air masses (Tunved et al, 2005). Aerosol total number concentrations, which are usually dominated by particles present in the Atiken mode (below 0.1 μm particle diameter), will be used for the comparison of an extensive set of vertical profiles over Southern Germany and local ground based condensation nuclei (CN) time series
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