Response of California temperature to regional anthropogenic aerosol changes

In this paper, we compare constructed records of concentrations of black carbon (BC)--an indicator of anthropogenic aerosols--with observed surface temperature trends in California. Annual average BC concentrations in major air basins in California significantly decreased after about 1990, coincident with an observed statewide surface temperature increase. Seasonal aerosol concentration trends are consistent with observed seasonal temperature trends. These data suggest that the reduction in anthropogenic aerosol concentrations contributed to the observed surface temperature increase. Conversely, high aerosol concentrations may lower surface temperature and partially offset the temperature increase of greenhouse gases

Modified thermal-optical analysis using spectral absorption selectivity to distinguish black carbon from pyrolized organic carbon

Black carbon (BC), a main component of combustion-generated soot, is a strong absorber of sunlight and contributes to climate change. Measurement methods for BC are uncertain, however. This study presents a method for analyzing the BC mass loading on a quartz fiber filter using a modified thermal-optical analysis method, wherein light transmitted through the sample is measured over a spectral region instead of at a single wavelength as the sample is heated. Evolution of the spectral light transmission signal depends on the relative amounts of light-absorbing BC and char, the latter of which forms when organic carbon in the sample pyrolyzes during heating. Absorption selectivities of BC and char are found to be distinct and are used to apportion the amount of light attenuated by each component in the sample. Light attenuation is converted to mass concentration based on derived mass attenuation efficiencies (MAE) of BC and char. The fraction of attenuation due to each component are scaled by their individual MAE values and added together as the total mass of light absorbing carbon (LAC). An iterative algorithm is used to find the MAE values for both BC and char that provide the best fit to the carbon mass remaining on the filter (derived from direct measurements of thermally evolved CO{sub 2}) at temperatures higher than 480 C. This method was applied to measure the BC concentration in precipitation samples collected from coastal and mountain sites in Northern California. The uncertainty in measured BC concentration of samples that contained a high concentration of organics susceptible to char ranged from 12 to 100 percent, depending on the mass loading of BC on the filter. The lower detection limit for this method was approximately 0.35 {micro}g BC and uncertainty approached 20 percent for BC mass loading greater than 1.0 {micro}g BC

Soot reference materials for instrument calibration and intercomparisons: A workshop summary with recommendations

Soot, which is produced from biomass burning and the incomplete combustion of fossil and biomass fuels, has been linked to regional and global climate change and to negative health problems. Scientists measure the properties of soot using a variety of methods in order to quantify source emissions and understand its atmospheric chemistry, reactivity under emission conditions, interaction with solar radiation, influence on clouds, and health impacts. A major obstacle currently limiting progress is the absence of established standards or reference materials for calibrating the many instruments used to measure the various properties of soot. The current state of availability and practicability of soot standard reference materials (SRMs) was reviewed by a group of 50 international experts during a workshop in June of 2011. The workshop was convened to summarize the current knowledge on soot measurement techniques, identify the measurement uncertainties and limitations related to the lack of soot SRMs, and identify attributes of SRMs that, if developed, would reduce measurement uncertainties. The workshop established that suitable SRMs are available for calibrating some, but not all, measurement methods. The community of users of the single-particle soot-photometer (SP2), an instrument using laser-induced incandescence, identified a suitable SRM, fullerene soot, but users of instruments that measure light absorption by soot collected on filters did not. Similarly, those who use thermal optical analysis (TOA) to analyze the organic and elemental carbon components of soot were not satisfied with current SRMs. The workshop, and subsequent, interactive discussions, produced a number of recommendations for the development of new SRMs, and their implementation, that would be suitable for the different soot measurement methods

Special Issue for the 9th International Conference on Carbonaceous Particles in the Atmosphere

Carbonaceous particles are a minor constituent of the atmosphere but have a profound effect on air quality, human health, visibility and climate. The importance of carbonaceous particles has been increasingly recognized and become a mainstream topic at numerous conferences. Such was not the case in 1978, when the 1st International Conference on Carbonaceous Particles in the Atmosphere (ICCPA), or ''Carbon Conference'' as it is widely known, was introduced as a new forum to bring together scientists who were just beginning to reveal the importance and complexity of carbonaceous particles in the environment. Table 1 lists the conference dates, venues in the series as well as the proceedings, and special issues resulting form the meetings. Penner and Novakov (Penner and Novakov, 1996) provide an excellent historical perspective to the early ICCPA Conferences. Thirty years later, the ninth in this conference series was held at its inception site, Berkeley, California, attended by 160 scientists from 31 countries, and featuring both new and old themes in 49 oral and 83 poster presentations. Topics covered such areas as historical trends in black carbon aerosol, ambient concentrations, analytic techniques, secondary aerosol formation, biogenic, biomass, and HULIS1 characterization, optical properties, and regional and global climate effects. The conference website, http://iccpa.lbl.gov/, holds the agenda, as well as many presentations, for the 9th ICCPA. The 10th ICCPA is tentatively scheduled for 2011 in Vienna, Austria. The papers in this issue are representative of several of the themes discussed in the conference. Ban-Weiss et al., (Ban-Weiss et al., accepted) measured the abundance of ultrafine particles in a traffic tunnel and found that heavy duty diesel trucks emit at least an order of magnitude more ultrafine particles than light duty gas-powered vehicles per unit of fuel burned. Understanding of this issue is important as ultrafine particles have been shown to adversely affect human health (Lighty et al., 2000; Pope and Dockery, 2006). Gan et al. (Gan et al., accepted) examined the indoor air quality aboard submarines and found that the diesel particulate matter concentrations exceeded the EPA 24 hour standard. Claeys et al. (Claeys et al., accepted) studied the importance and sources of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in remote marine environment during a period of high biological activity. Methanesulphonate was the major SOA compound detected and there was no evidence for SOA from isoprene. The optical properties of gasoline and diesel vehicle particulate emissions and their relative contribution to radiative forcing was studied by Strawa et al. (Strawa et al., accepted)

Measured Black Carbon Deposition on the Sierra Nevada Snow Pack and Implication for Snow Pack Retreat

Modeling studies show that the darkening of snow and ice by black carbon deposition is a major factor for the rapid disappearance of arctic sea ice, mountain glaciers and snow packs. This study provides one of the first direct measurements for the efficient removal of black carbon from the atmosphere by snow and its subsequent deposition to the snow packs of California. The early melting of the snow packs in the Sierras is one of the contributing factors to the severe water problems in California. BC concentrations in falling snow were measured at two mountain locations and in rain at a coastal site. All three stations reveal large BC concentrations in precipitation, ranging from 1.7 ng/g to 12.9 ng/g. The BC concentrations in the air after the snow fall were negligible suggesting an extremely efficient removal of BC by snow. The data suggest that below cloud scavenging, rather than ice nuclei, was the dominant source of BC in the snow. A five-year comparison of BC, dust, and total fine aerosol mass concentrations at multiple sites reveals that the measurements made at the sampling sites were representative of large scale deposition in the Sierra Nevada. The relative concentration of iron and calcium in the mountain aerosol indicates that one-quarter to one-third of the BC may have been transported from Asia

Aerosol organic carbon to black carbon ratios: Analysis of published data and implications for climate forcing

Measurements of organic carbon (OC) and black carbon (BC) concentrations over a variety of locations worldwide, have been analyzed to infer the spatial distributions of the ratios of OC to BC. Since these ratios determine the relative amounts of scattering and absorption, they are often used to estimate the radiative forcing due to aerosols. An artifact in the protocol for filter measurements of OC has led to widespread overestimates of the ratio of OC to BC in atmospheric aerosols. We developed a criterion to correct for this artifact and analyze corrected OC to BC ratios. The OC to BC ratios, ranging from 1.3 to 2.4, appear relatively constant and are generally unaffected by seasonality, sources or technology changes, at the locations considered here. The ratios compare well with emission inventories over Europe and China but are a factor of two lower in other regions. The reduced estimate for OC/BC in aerosols strengthens the argument that reduction of soot emissions maybe a useful approach to slow global warming

Large historical changes of fossil-fuel black carbon aerosols

Anthropogenic emissions of fine black carbon (BC) particles, the principal light-absorbing atmospheric aerosol, have varied during the past century in response to changes of fossil-fuel utilization, technology developments, and emission controls. We estimate historical trends of fossil-fuel BC emissions in six regions that represent about two-thirds of present day emissions and extrapolate these to global emissions from 1875 onward. Qualitative features in these trends show rapid increase in the latter part of the 1800s, the leveling off in the first half of the 1900s, and the re-acceleration in the past 50 years as China and India developed. We find that historical changes of fuel utilization have caused large temporal change in aerosol absorption, and thus substantial change of aerosol single scatter albedo in some regions, which suggests that BC may have contributed to global temperature changes in the past century. This implies that the BC history needs to be represented realistically in climate change assessments