Water nucleation properties of chaparral fire aerosol particles

Abstract

In December, 1986, planned and prescribed forest management burns took place at Lodi Canyon, on the north side of the Los Angeles Basin, California. These fires involved a mixture of species of small trees and shrubs, including scrub oak, chamise, and mountain mahogany, known collectively as ''chaparral'' in the Western US. Over a period of about two weeks, about 200 hectares of chaparral were consumed. This prescribed burn presented an opportunity for three days of airborne measurements of aerosol properties including total particle or condensation nuclei (CN) concentrations and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) concentrations. This study is in coordination with other efforts conducted simultaneously; here the emphasis will be on the airborne CN and CCN measurements and on related studies conducted on a laboratory scale. In this study, we distinguish between CCN and the total aerosol particle population as gauged by the CN count. CCN and CN concentrations and CCN/CN ratios will be presented for the airborne measurements and for laboratory measurements employing a similar fuel. Ancillary ion chromatography (IC) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) information will also be presented for the laboratory-scale chaparral burn. 11 refs., 4 figs., 4 tabs.