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Formation of secondary inorganic aerosol in a frigid urban atmosphere

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Abstract

Formation of secondary inorganic aerosol (SIA) was investigated during a six-month long heating season in Harbin, China. Enhanced sulfate formation was observed at high relative humidity (RH), with the same threshold RH (80%) for both colder and warmer measurement periods. Compared to wintertime results from Beijing, the threshold RH was considerably higher in Harbin, whereas the RH-dependent enhancement of sulfur oxidation ratio (SOR) was less significant. In addition, the high RH events were rarely encountered, and for other periods, the SOR were typically as low as ∼0.1. Therefore, the sulfate formation was considered inefficient in this study. After excluding the several cases with high RH, both SOR and the nitrogen oxidation ratio (NOR) exhibited increasing trends as the temperature increased, with the increase of NOR being sharper. The nitrate to sulfate ratio tended to increase with increasing temperature as well. Based on a semi-quantitative approach, this trend was attributed primarily to the temperature-dependent variations of precursors including SO2 and NO2. The influence of biomass burning emissions on SIA formation was also evident. With stronger impact of biomass burning, an enhancement in NOR was observed whereas SOR was largely unchanged. The different patterns were identified as the dominant driver of the larger nitrate to sulfate ratios measured at higher concentrations of fine particulate matter.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41805097), the Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (No. YQ2019D004), the State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment (No. ES202006), the State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (No. 19K02ESPCT), the State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Sources and Control of Air Pollution Complex (No. SCAPC202002) and Heilongjiang Touyan Team. The authors would like to thank Laura E. King for proofreading the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, School of Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150090, China

    Yuan Cheng, Qinqin Yu, Jiumeng Liu, Wanli Ma & Hong Qi

  2. Key Laboratory of Environmental Optics and Technology, Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, China

    Youwen Sun

  3. State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather & CMA Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China

    Linlin Liang

  4. National Research Center for Environmental Analysis and Measurement, Environmental Development Center of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Beijing, 100029, China

    Zhenyu Du

  5. State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Guannan Geng & Kebin He

  6. Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Qiang Zhang

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  1. Yuan Cheng
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  2. Qinqin Yu
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  3. Jiumeng Liu
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  10. Qiang Zhang
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Correspondence to Jiumeng Liu or Youwen Sun.

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Highlights

• Harbin showed relatively high threshold RH (80%) for apparent increase of SOR.

• The observed SOR were at the lower end of the ratios from Beijing’s winter.

• Temperature-dependent increase of NOR was sharper than that of SOR.

• NOR increased with stronger biomass burning impact but SOR was largely unchanged.

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Cheng, Y., Yu, Q., Liu, J. et al. Formation of secondary inorganic aerosol in a frigid urban atmosphere. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng. 16, 18 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-021-1452-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-021-1452-0

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