Abstract
Abstract. The Measurements of Urban, Marine and Biogenic Air (MUMBA) campaign took place in Wollongong, New South Wales (a small coastal city approximately 80 km south of Sydney, Australia) from 21 December 2012 to 15 February 2013. Like many Australian cities, Wollongong is surrounded by dense eucalyptus forest, so the urban airshed is heavily influenced by biogenic emissions. Instruments were deployed during MUMBA to measure the gaseous and aerosol composition of the atmosphere with the aim of providing a detailed characterisation of the complex environment of the ocean–forest–urban interface that could be used to test the skill of atmospheric models. The gases measured included ozone, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and many of the most abundant volatile organic compounds. The aerosol characterisation included total particle counts above 3 nm, total cloud condensation nuclei counts, mass concentration, number concentration size distribution, aerosol chemical analyses and elemental analysis.The campaign captured varied meteorological conditions, including two extreme heat events, providing a potentially valuable test for models of future air quality in a warmer climate. There was also an episode when the site sampled clean marine air for many hours, providing a useful additional measure of the background concentrations of these trace gases within this poorly sampled region of the globe. In this paper we describe the campaign, the meteorology and the resulting observations of atmospheric composition in general terms in order to equip the reader with a sufficient understanding of the Wollongong regional influences to use the MUMBA datasets as a case study for testing a chemical transport model. The data are available from PANGAEA (http://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.871982).
Highlights
The value of intensive measurement campaigns in helping to understand and characterise local atmospheric composition and air quality has been recognised since as early as 1969, when the Los Angeles Smog Project took place (Whitby et al, 1972b)
The formation of secondary organic aerosol has been of particular interest, with many studies using elemental carbon as an indicator of primary emissions; when the ratio of organic carbon to elemental carbon in the sampled air is higher than expected from the ratio of the primary emissions, secondary organic aerosol formation is indicated (Castro et al, 1999; Gray et al, 1986; Turpin and Huntzicker, 1995)
The combined datasets from MUMBA provide a useful case study for testing the skill of air quality models in the complex environment of urban, marine and forest influences in coastal Australia, where the majority of its inhabitants live. This overview paper aims to provide the reader with a sufficient understanding of the MUMBA campaign to use the datasets as a test case for any air quality model, including an understanding of the Wollongong urban airshed, regional topography, emissions and meteorology
Summary
The value of intensive measurement campaigns in helping to understand and characterise local atmospheric composition and air quality has been recognised since as early as 1969, when the Los Angeles Smog Project took place (Whitby et al, 1972b). There have been some detailed studies to characterise the concentrations of VOCs in the clean background atmosphere in the Australasian region (Colomb et al, 2009; Galbally et al, 2007; Lawson et al, 2015) In this overview paper, we describe a measurement campaign in Wollongong, a small Australian coastal city with approximately 292 000 residents. Influences from nearby ocean sources, urban emissions and the biogenic emissions from the surrounding eucalypt forests were expected to impact the site This campaign aimed to make detailed measurements of atmospheric composition under the combined influence of these different sources, all of which typically affect the populated regions on the eastern coast of Australia
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