Identification

Title

The transport of Asian dust and combustion aerosols and associated ozone to North America as observed from a mountaintop monitoring site in the California coast range

Abstract

Aerosol and tropospheric ozone transport to North America has important implications for regional air quality and climate. We present data from Chews Ridge, a remote mountaintop site in California, in February-September 2012, which identifies separate Asian dust and Asian combustion aerosol signals and quantifies exogenous ozone. We use positive matrix factorization of size-fractionated aerosol X-ray fluorescence data and Pb-206/Pb-207 and Pb-208/Pb-207 isotope measurements to isolate aerosol signals of Asian origins and find good agreement between both types source attribution techniques. Power spectra of Asian dust and Asian combustion signals reveal two distinct peaks, one seasonal (similar to 90days) and one monthly (similar to 25-30days). Overall, 89% of the Asian dust signal occurs in March-May, compared with June-September, whereas only 51% of the Asian combustion signal occurs in March-May. Nearly half the Pb observed at Chews Ridge was derived from Asia (46%; 8.3% from Asian dust, 23% from Asian combustion, and 15% of the Asian Pb signal was not explained by the positive matrix factorization). A positive correlation between deseasonalized ozone concentrations and the Asian factors suggests that ozone is elevated by 6.30.8ppb due to transpacific transport. Scanning mobility particle size spectra were also measured from May to September and indicate that new particles are often produced and grow throughout the afternoon during onshore flow. We hypothesize that particle nucleation on the windward edge of the continent is an important source of new particles.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7736tqz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2018-05-27T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact