References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

1680-7324

Copernicus Publications

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-14-9641-2014

Impact of black carbon aerosol over Italian basin valleys: high-resolution measurements along vertical profiles, radiative forcing and heating rate

Ferrero

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0777-2647

¹ Castelli

² ⁷ Ferrini

B. S.

¹ Moscatelli

¹ Perrone

M. G.

¹ Sangiorgi

¹ D'Angelo

¹ Rovelli

¹ Moroni

³ ⁶ Scardazza

³ Močnik

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6379-2381

⁴ Bolzacchini

¹ Petitta

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0445-7713

² Cappelletti

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9652-2457

⁵ ⁶

POLARIS Research Centre, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Milano-Bicocca, Piazza della Scienza 1, 20126, Milan, Italy

EURAC Institute for Applied Remote Sensing, Viale Druso 1, 39100, Bolzano, Italy

DICA, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Via G. Duranti 93, 06125 Perugia, Italy

Aerosol d.o.o., Kamniška 41, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

Dipartimento di Chimica, Biologia e Biotecnologie, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Via Elce di Sotto 8, 06123 Perugia, Italy

SMAArt, Università degli Studi di Perugia, Piazza dell'Università 1, 06100 Perugia, Italy

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Ambientale e Meccanica, Università di Trento, via Mesiano 77, 38123 Trento, Italy

16 09 2014

14 18 9641 9664

2014

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/14/9641/2014/acp-14-9641-2014.pdf

A systematic study of black carbon (BC) vertical profiles measured at high-resolution over three Italian basin valleys (Terni Valley, Po Valley and Passiria Valley) is presented. BC vertical profiles are scarcely available in literature. The campaign lasted 45 days and resulted in 120 measured vertical profiles. Besides the BC mass concentration, measurements along the vertical profiles also included aerosol size distributions in the optical particle counter range, chemical analysis of filter samples and a full set of meteorological parameters. Using the collected experimental data, we performed calculations of aerosol optical properties along the vertical profiles. The results, validated with AERONET data, were used as inputs to a radiative transfer model (libRadtran). The latter allowed an estimation of vertical profiles of the aerosol direct radiative effect, the atmospheric absorption and the heating rate in the lower troposphere. The present measurements revealed some common behaviors over the studied basin valleys. Specifically, at the mixing height, marked concentration drops of both BC (range: from −48.4 ± 5.3 to −69.1 ± 5.5%) and aerosols (range: from −23.9 ± 4.3 to −46.5 ± 7.3%) were found. The measured percentage decrease of BC was higher than that of aerosols: therefore, the BC aerosol fraction decreased upwards. Correspondingly, both the absorption and scattering coefficients decreased strongly across the mixing layer (range: from −47.6 ± 2.5 to −71.3 ± 3.0% and from −23.5 ± 0.8 to −61.2 ± 3.1%, respectively) resulting in a single-scattering albedo increase along height (range: from +4.9 ± 2.2 to +7.4 ± 1.0%). This behavior influenced the vertical distribution of the aerosol direct radiative effect and of the heating rate. In this respect, the highest atmospheric absorption of radiation was predicted below the mixing height (~ 2–3 times larger than above it) resulting in a heating rate characterized by a vertical negative gradient (range: from −2.6 ± 0.2 to −8.3 ± 1.2 K day−1 km−1). In conclusion, the present results suggest that the BC below the mixing height has the potential to promote a negative feedback on the atmospheric stability over basin valleys, weakening the ground-based thermal inversions and increasing the dispersal conditions.

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