Articles | Volume 17, issue 1
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-313-2017
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-313-2017
Research article
 | 
05 Jan 2017
Research article |  | 05 Jan 2017

Characteristics of brown carbon in the urban Po Valley atmosphere

Francesca Costabile, Stefania Gilardoni, Francesca Barnaba, Antonio Di Ianni, Luca Di Liberto, Davide Dionisi, Maurizio Manigrasso, Marco Paglione, Vanes Poluzzi, Matteo Rinaldi, Maria Cristina Facchini, and Gian Paolo Gobbi

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Cited articles

Alexander, D. T., Crozier, P. A., and Anderson, J. R.: Brown carbon spheres in East Asian outflow and their optical properties, Science, 321, 833–836, 2008.
Andreae, M. O. and Gelencsér, A.: Black carbon or brown carbon? The nature of light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosols, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 6, 3131–3148, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-6-3131-2006, 2006.
Arola, A., Schuster, G., Myhre, G., Kazadzis, S., Dey, S., and Tripathi, S. N.: Inferring absorbing organic carbon content from AERONET data, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 215–225, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-11-215-2011, 2011.
Backman, J., Virkkula, A., Vakkari, V., Beukes, J. P., Van Zyl, P. G., Josipovic, M., Piketh, S., Tiitta, P., Chiloane, K., Petäjä, T., Kulmala, M., and Laakso, L.: Differences in aerosol absorption Ångström exponents between correction algorithms for a particle soot absorption photometer measured on the South African Highveld, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 7, 4285–4298, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-7-4285-2014, 2014.
Bahadur, E., Praveen, P. S., Xu, Y., and Ramanathan, V.: Solar absorption by elemental and brown carbon determined from spectral observations, P. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 109, 17366–17371, 2012.
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We investigate the particle size distribution and spectral optical properties of brown carbon (BrC) associated with the formation of secondary aerosol in the ambient atmosphere and relate these properties to major aerosol chemical components. We found that BrC occurs in particles in the droplet mode size range, enriched in ammonium nitrate and poor in black carbon (BC), with a strong dependance on the organic aerosol to BC ratio.
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