Physical, Chemical and Optical Properties of Fine Aerosol as a Function of Relative Humidity at Gosan, Korea during ABC-EAREX 2005

Abstract

The water uptake by fine aerosol in the atmosphere has been investigated at Gosan, Korea during ABC-EAREX 2005. The concentration of inorganic ion and carbon components, size distribution, and light scattering coefficients in normal and dry conditions were simultaneously measured for <TEX>$PM_{2.5}$</TEX> by using a parallel integrated monitoring system. The result of this study shows that ambient fine particles collected at Gosan were dominated by water-soluble ionic species (35%) and carbonaceous materials (18%). In addition, it shows the large growth of aerosol in the droplet mode when RH is higher than 70%. Size distribution of the particulate surface area in a wider size range (<TEX>$0.07-17{\mu}m$</TEX>) shows that the elevation of RH make ambient aerosol grow to be the droplet mode one around <TEX>$0.6{\mu}m$</TEX> or the coarse mode one, larger than <TEX>$2.5{\mu}m$</TEX>. Hygroscopic factor data calculated from the ratio of aerosol scattering coefficients at a given ambient RH and a reference RH (25%) show that water uptake began at the intermediate RH range, from 40% to 60%, with the average hygroscopic factor of 1.10 for 40% RH, 1.11 for 50% RH, and 1.17 for 60% RH, respectively. Finally, average chemical composition and the corresponding growth curves were analyzed in order to investigate the relationship between carbonaceous material fraction and hygroscopicity. As a result, the aerosol growth curve shows that inorganic salts such as sulphate and nitrate as well as carbonaceous materials including OC largely contribute to the aerosol water uptake.