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- Title
Aerosol light absorption from attenuation measurements of PTFE-membrane filter samples: implications for particulate matter monitoring networks.
- Authors
Pandey, Apoorva; Shetty, Nishit J.; Chakrabarty, Rajan K.
- Abstract
Mass absorption cross-section (MAC) measurements of atmospherically-relevant aerosols are required to quantify their effect on Earth's radiative budget. Estimating aerosol light absorption from transmittance and/or reflectance measurements through filter deposits is an attractive option because of ease of deployment in field settings and low cost. These measurements suffer from artifacts that depend on a given filter measurement system and type of aerosol. Empirical correction algorithms are available for commercial instruments equipped with optically-thick fiber filters, but optically-thin filter media have not been characterized in detail. Here, we present empirical relationships between particle light absorption-measured using multi-wavelength integrated photoacoustic spectrometers and nephelometers-and attenuation measurements for polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane filter samples of carbonaceous aerosols generated from combustion of diverse biomass fuels and kerosene (surrogate for fossil-fuel combustion). We establish a simple, wavelength-independent formulation for calculating aerosol MAC and absorption coefficients from filter attenuation measurements. We find the ratio between in-situ absorption and bulk attenuation to be inversely proportional to aerosol single scattering albedo. As a case study, we apply our formulations on 2010 attenuation datasets of the Interagency Monitoring of PROtected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) network to quantify the overestimation in their filter-based absorption coefficients.
- Subjects
ATMOSPHERIC aerosols; MEMBRANE filters; PARTICULATE matter
- Publication
Atmospheric Measurement Techniques Discussions, 2018, p1
- ISSN
1867-8610
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5194/amt-2018-228