Resumen de Ground-based atmospheric monitoring in Mallorca and Corsica in summer 2013 in the context of ChArMEx: Results on number-size distributions, on-line and offline aerosol chemistry, and volatile organic compounds
Jorge Pey Betrán, José Carlos Cerro Garrido, S. Hellebust, H. Langley DeWitt, Brice Temime Roussel, Miriam Elser, N. Pérez, A. Sylvestre, D. Salameh, Griša Mocnik, André S. H. Prévôt, Y. L. Zhang, Sönke Szidat, N. Marchand
As part of the Chemistry-Aerosol Mediterranean Experiment (ChArMEx), simultaneous field campaigns were conducted in the summer of 2013 in several Mediterranean observatories. Among these observatories, Ersa-Corsica site had the most complete set of instrumentation and was where most of the scientific effort was concentrated. In addition to participating in the Ersa supersite, the Laboratoire the Chimie de L’Environnement, in collaboration with the University of the Balearic Islands, installed a complementary observatory in Mallorca (Spain) in the Spanish Ministry of Defense facilities “Cap Es Pinar”. A number of European institutions were involved in the campaign. Overall, a complete instrumentation set-up to measure the aerosol and gas-phase chemical and physical properties and concentrations in Mallorca was deployed: a HR-ToF-AMS to measure the real-time non-refractory chemical composition and mass loading of aerosols with aerodynamic diameters between 70 and 1000nm (e.g., sulfate, nitrate, ammonium, chloride and organic compounds); a PTR-ToF-MS to quantify a wide spectral range of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including primary species such as isoprene, monoterpenes, benzene, xylene and DMS, and secondary products such as methacrolein, glyoxal, methylvinylketone; a SMPS to obtain particle number and size distribution of aerosols in the range 14-650 nm; a LAAPTOF to characterize in real time individual particles in terms of size and chemical composition; a 7 length-wave aethalometer to monitor the absorption coefficients of < 1000nm aerosols; two high-volume samplers for subsequent chemical determinations, including off-line 14C analysis, of the PM10 and PM1 fractions; a mobile van with air quality surveillance instruments (e.g., CO, CO2, NOx); and a meteorological tower.
During the campaign, wide-scale atmospheric episodes were observed at both Mallorca and Corsica, including Saharan dust outbreaks, new-particle formation events and regional accumulation of pollutants. Different air mass sources and meteorology were found to influence Mallorca and Corsica. In particular, more Saharan dust episodes and persistent accumulation processes were observed in Mallorca, while outflows from the Po valley were observed at times in Corsica. Thus, the general atmospheric characteristics of the Mediterranean basin as well as region-specific aerosol episodes were able to be differentiated and characterized by the comparison of these two sampling sites and conclusions about factors influencing anthropogenic aerosol concentrations in the Mediterranean can be drawn.
