Atmospheric Black Carbon: Monitoring and Assessment

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Air Quality".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 October 2024) | Viewed by 1029

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School of Atmospheric Physics, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Interests: atmospheric physics and atmospheric environment; atmospheric remote sensing and atmospheric sounding
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Atmospheric black carbon (BC) absorbs radiation in the ultraviolet and visible spectra. BC, emitted from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuel, biofuel, and biomass, is one of the strongest absorptive aerosols for solar radiation, representing one of the main research fields in atmospheric studies at present. Once being emitted into the atmosphere, BC particles quickly become inhomogeneous during the aging processes. BC and its mixtures influence local and global climate directly by strongly absorbing solar radiation. Due to their complex geometry and mixing structure, our understanding of the optical properties of carbonaceous aerosols is still limited, which makes carbonaceous aerosols one of the largest uncertainties in the estimation of aerosol radiative forcing.

This Special Issue focuses on the monitoring and assessment of BC aerosols, including chemical composition, size distribution, mixing state, optical properties, spatial and temporal distributions, and source apportionment. Moreover, novel methods and techniques for the remote sensing of carbonaceous aerosol properties and other topics related to the climate effects of carbonaceous aerosols are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Xiaolin Zhang
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • black carbon
  • monitoring
  • assessment
  • climate effect
  • mixing state

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

11 pages, 2132 KiB  
Article
The Single-Scattering Albedo of Black Carbon Aerosols in China
by Xiaolin Zhang and Yuanyuan Wu
Atmosphere 2024, 15(10), 1238; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15101238 - 16 Oct 2024
Viewed by 603
Abstract
Black carbon (BC) aerosols have attracted wide attention over the world due to their significant climate effects on local and global scales. BC extinction aerosol optical thickness (AOT), scattering AOT, and single scattering albedo (SSA) over China are systematically studied based on the [...] Read more.
Black carbon (BC) aerosols have attracted wide attention over the world due to their significant climate effects on local and global scales. BC extinction aerosol optical thickness (AOT), scattering AOT, and single scattering albedo (SSA) over China are systematically studied based on the MERRA-2 satellite reanalysis data from 1983 to 2022 in terms of the spatial, yearly, seasonal, and monthly variations. The extinction and scattering AOTs of BC show similar spatial distribution, with high values in eastern and southern China, generally as opposed to BC SSA. A decrease in BC extinction and scattering AOTs has been documented over the last decade. The mean BC extinction AOT, scattering AOT, and SSA over China are 0.0054, 0.0014, and 0.26, respectively. The BC SSA showed small variations during 1983–2022, although a high BC extinction AOT and scattering AOT have been seen in the last two decades. During different decades, the seasonal patterns of BC extinction and scattering AOTs may differ, whereas the BC SSA shows seasonal consistency. Significant monthly variations in the BC SSA are seen over four decades, which are in agreement with their seasonal patterns. The mean BC extinction AOTs are 0.037, 0.033, 0.023, and 0.0054, whereas the average BC scattering AOTs are 0.0088, 0.0082, 0.0060, and 0.0014 in the Pearl River Delta (PRD), Yangtze River Delta (YRD), Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region, and Tarim Basin (TB), respectively. It is interesting to see that BC SSA values in the TB region are generally higher than those over the PRD, YRD and BTH areas, whereas the reverse is true for BC extinction and scattering AOTs. This study provides references for further research on black carbon aerosols and air pollution in China. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Atmospheric Black Carbon: Monitoring and Assessment)
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