Abstract
Aerosol samples (PM10) were collected using an aethalometer from 15 July 2001 to 18 April 2004 at the PICO-NARE site in Pico island, Azores, Portugal. The aethalometer is at an altitude of 2225 m AMSL, and sampled for 24 h in most cases, and for a few periods continuously. Samples were assessed through instrumental neutron activation analysis (k 0-variant), and concentrations of up to 15 airborne elements were determined. Concentrations are in the order of magnitude of a moderately polluted urban-industrial site. Elements are predominantly entrained by air masses from North-Central America, and to a lesser extent from Europe and North Africa. PCA and PMF assigned sources related to pollution (traffic, fossil-fuel combustion, mining, industrial processing) and to natural occurrences (crustal, Saharan episodes, marine). Although data uncertainties are relatively high due to the small masses collected in the filters and impurities in them, PMF – which includes the uncertainty – did not prove better than PCA when missing data are replaced by arithmetic means of the determined values for each element.
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Freitas, M.d., Pacheco, A.M., Dionísio, I., Vieira, B.J. (2009). Aerosol Concentrations and Remote Sources of Airborne Elements Over Pico Mountain, Azores, Portugal. In: Kim, Y.J., Platt, U., Gu, M.B., Iwahashi, H. (eds) Atmospheric and Biological Environmental Monitoring. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9674-7_9
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