DAURE

This Wiki is a repository of information about a field campaign to be conducted at an urban/rural site pair in Barcelona and Montseny (Catalonia, Spain) in winter and summer 2009.

Objectives

The objectives of this campaign is to characterize the sources of fine aerosols in the Barcelona region, with particular attention to carbonaceous aerosols. State-of-the-Art methods such as 14C and HR-ToF-AMS analysis have been applied or are starting to be applied to the source apportionment problem in Central Europe, but not yet in the Mediterranean region. There are reasons to believe that the results from Central Europe (dominance of biogenic and biomass burning in the organic aerosol) may not apply in the Mediterranean, and this campaign is a unique opportunity to evaluate this hypothesis.

Sites

The campaigns should be carried out simultaneously at two sites:

• Site A will be inside Barcelona (CSIC)

• Site B will be a rural mountain site at Montseny (~50 km away), ideally with the same measurements at both sites.
  • Note that at Montseny the unpaved mountain road is in poor condition, and has posed problems in the past.
  • There are two locations to install instruments at Montseny, which have 9 and 4 kW of power available for new instruments (X Querol, 21-Jan-08)

Participant Groups and Measurements

The following groups are likely to participate in this campaign, although in some cases this depends on funding.

• Host group: Xavier Querol's at the Institut de Ciencias de la Terra in Barcelona
  • Measurements: aerosol elemental composition (ICP-MS), OPC & SMPS size distributinos, CO, NOx, O3, SO2, and meteorology (T, RH, wind speed & direction, radiation, rain) at both sites
  • Funding is pending

• Jimenez group at the University of Colorado-Boulder
  • Measurement: High-Resolution Time-of-Flight Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS) at one site
  • This will be potentially in collaboration with Eiko Nemitz's group at CEH Edimburgh
  • Funding is pending

• Laboratory for ATmospheric Chemistry at the Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland
  • Measurements: Filter-based 14C (of EC, OC, WSOC, WIOC) at both sites
  • High-Resolution Time-of-Flight Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS) at one site. Possibly also Q-AMS in summer, and/or mobile lab.
  • Drum impactor for semi-real time measurements of inorganics
  • Molecular tracers and NMR spectral fingerprints (through collaborators in EUCARII)

• Several other groups have expressed an interest in participating, including:
  • Prof. Armin Hansel from University of Innsbruck, Austria, with the High-Resolution Proton-Transfer-Reaction Mass Spectrometer (HR-PTR-MS) for VOC detection
  • Prof. Phil Hopke from Clarkson Univ., US, with continuous EC/OC analyzers
  • Prof. Costas Sioutas from Univ. Southern California. US, TBD.

Dates

If sufficient funding and personnel are available, we will conduct 2 campaigns to contrast summer and winter at the paired urban/rural sites.

Confirmed dates in Winter/Spring 2009

• 23-Feb-09 to 27-March-09, together with EMEP-2 campaign. PSI is available for sure and can bring HR-ToF-AMS. Also molecular tracers and spectral fingerprints.

Tentative Dates in Summer 2009

• Tentatively the last 3 weeks of Jul-09 and first week of Aug-09, to catch a summer period. (Eiko has a campaign 8-June to 8-July 2009 in the Netherlands, which prevents moving this time period earlier in time, if his instrument is used).
• Andre Prevot (Email on 14-Dec-2008): "We prefer a real summer campaign in 2009 over the autumn campaign during EMEP. The summer campaign could be anytime from May to August in our opinion. We have to wait to fix the dates until we know the dates for the campaign in Paris which is part of the Megacity EU project MEGAPOLI. We can come to Barcelona before or after the Paris campaign. In the summer campaign we can bring the ToF and eventually the Q-AMS. If we have another AMS at one of the fixed sites, we might bring the Q-AMS in our mobile van instead of putting it at a fixed site. (Molecular tracers and spectral fingerprints will not be available)"

Dates that don't work

• We had discussed May-08, simultaneously with the EUCARII-1 campaign in Europe. However Jose cannot make this time period due to a conflict in April-08 with the NASA ARCTAS campaign.
• Alternative: Mid-Sep-08 to Mid-Oct-08, together with EMEP-1 campaign. However this may be too early for several of the groups involved, and too late meteorologically, as September is not as warm in Barcelona as the June-Aug period.

Issues to deal with

• Power and space at Montseny (Xavier 26-Feb-08)
  • The power available at the Montseny site is 9 kW at one location and 4 kW at second location (may be upgradeable to 9 kW)
  • Space should not be a problem at Montseny
  • The main problem at Montseny is the access road (gravel / rock) which can be difficult, especially in case of snow
  • Space could also be rented at Montseny at a camping slightly lower than the main site, which is easier to access by road

• Power and space in Barcelona (Xavier 26-Feb-08)
  • Tentatively the parking lot of the school of Geology would be the location to sample
  • Need to make sure that public works aren't taking place at this location during the campaigns

• Power demand of individual instruments:
  • HR-ToF-AMS is ~ 1 kW (including sampling pumps).

• Eiko Nemitz, email of 26-Nov-2007: "I would be interested to investigate the possibility to measure NH3 and HNO3 also. Modelling of NH4NO3 is still a major uncertainty in the European regional models, including the EMEP model. We could potentially loan a simple rotating wet denuder which fills hourly samples into test tubes for subsequent laboratory analysis for NH4+ and anions (HNO3, HCl, SO2). However, this would require laboratory analysis of 24 x 30 samples + some blanks for each month by some local lab. Is there a chance for the Spanish ministry to support this measurement?"