Articles | Volume 23, issue 24
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15643-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15643-2023
Research article
 | 
20 Dec 2023
Research article |  | 20 Dec 2023

Characterization of water-soluble brown carbon chromophores from wildfire plumes in the western USA using size-exclusion chromatography

Lisa Azzarello, Rebecca A. Washenfelder, Michael A. Robinson, Alessandro Franchin, Caroline C. Womack, Christopher D. Holmes, Steven S. Brown, Ann Middlebrook, Tim Newberger, Colm Sweeney, and Cora J. Young

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Cited articles

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. 
Bateman, A. P., Walser, M. L., Desyaterik, Y., Laskin, J., Laskin, A., and Nizkorodov, S. A.: The effect of solvent on the analysis of secondary organic aerosol using electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, Environ. Sci. Technol., 42, 7341–7346, https://doi.org/10.1021/es801226w, 2008. 
Bluvshtein, N., Lin, P., Flores, M., Segev, L., Mazar, Y., Tas, E., Snider, G., Weagle, C., Brown, S., Laskin, A., and Rudich, Y.: Broadband optical properties of biomass burning aerosol and identification of brown carbon chromophores, J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 122, 5441–5456, https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JD026230, 2017. 
Bond, T. C., Streets, D. G., Yarber, K. F., Nelson, S. M., Woo, J.-H., and Klimont, Z.: A technology-based global inventory of black and organic carbon emissions from combustion, J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 109, D14203, https://doi.org/10.1029/2003JD003697, 2004. 
Boucher, O., Randall, D., Artaxo, P., Bretherton, C., Feingold, G., Forster, P., Kerminen, V. M., Kondo, Y., Liao, H., Lohmann, U., Rasch, P., Satheesh, S. K., Sherwood, S., Stevens, B., and Zhang, X. Y.: Clouds and Aerosols, in: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.016, 2013. 
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We present a molecular size-resolved offline analysis of water-soluble brown carbon collected on an aircraft during FIREX-AQ. The smoke plumes were aged 0 to 5 h, where absorption was dominated by small molecular weight molecules, brown carbon absorption downwind did not consistently decrease, and the measurements differed from online absorption measurements of the same samples. We show how differences between online and offline absorption could be related to different measurement conditions.
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