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Hygroscopic behavior of aerosol particles from biomass fires using environmental transmission electron microscopy

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Abstract

We used both a conventional transmission electron microscope and an environmental transmission electron microscope (ETEM) to determine morphology, composition, and water uptake of 80 individual aerosol particles collected from the young smoke of flaming and smoldering fires during SAFARI-2000, a comprehensive air quality campaign in southern Africa. Six representative carbonaceous particle types are described, including soot, tar balls, and heterogeneously internally mixed particles containing C with S-, K-, Mg- or Na-rich inorganic phases. The hygroscopic behavior of these particles over the range 0–100% relative humidity (RH) was studied in detail. Soot and tar balls did not take up water, whereas the mixed organic–inorganic particles took up water between 55 and 100% RH, the exact value depending on the composition of their water-soluble phases. The inorganic phase appeared to determine the hygroscopic properties of all mixed organic–inorganic particles. Thus, incorporation of inorganic plant material or reactions with inorganic atmospheric components can dramatically alter the hygroscopic properties of carbonaceous particles in smoke plumes. The fraction of these mixed organic–inorganic particles plausibly increases with time, which will modulate the effects of smoke on radiative budgets.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0304213 from the Division of Atmospheric Chemistry. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We acknowledge the use of sample material collected during the SAFARI-2000 field campaign by Tom Kirchstetter, Kristy Ross, and the crew of the University of Washington Convair-580. We thank Mihály Pósfai, Jia Li, and Peter Hobbs for their help in obtaining good samples. We gratefully acknowledge the use of the facilities within the John M. Cowley Center for High Resolution Electron Microscopy within the Center for Solid State Science at Arizona State University. We thank Karl Weiss, John Wheatley, Renu Sharma, and Peter Crozier for their assistance with microscopy. We thank Mihály Pósfai and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on our manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth and Space Exploration and Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Trudi A. Semeniuk, Matthew E. Wise & Peter R. Buseck

  2. Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Scot T. Martin

  3. Scripps Institute of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA

    Lynn M. Russell

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  1. Trudi A. Semeniuk
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Correspondence to Peter R. Buseck.

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Semeniuk, T.A., Wise, M.E., Martin, S.T. et al. Hygroscopic behavior of aerosol particles from biomass fires using environmental transmission electron microscopy. J Atmos Chem 56, 259–273 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10874-006-9055-5

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