Evaluation of Six Years of Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor Data from the ARM Southern Great Plains Site

 
Poster PDF

Author

Thomas B. Watson — Brookhaven National Laboratory

Category

General topics – Aerosols

Description

The first DOE ARM Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (ACSM) users meeting was held on April 11-13, 2017 at Aerodyne Research, Inc., to discuss the Southern Great Plains (SGP) ACSM data quality and establish best practices for data collection and processing. The participants examined six years of calibration and processed data. Specific issues raised by data users were addressed and case studies from two field experiments and the most recent data from the ACSM installed in the newly commissioned SGP Aerosol Mobile Facility 7 (AMF7) were examined. The participants recommended that the SGP ACSM data be reprocessed using calibration values averaged over the history of SGP ACSM calibrations. They also recommended that the data quality be evaluated by comparing (1) observed versus predicted particulate ammonium (NH4+) mass loadings, and (2) ACSM mass loadings versus mass loadings calculated from particle size and light scattering data. The contents of the data streams from the ACSM were defined based on ARM requirements and the necessary tasks to implement these recommendations were assigned to the mentor and the instrument manufacturer. Six years of data are evaluated using the criteria developed at the users’ meeting, with particular attention to the comparison of ACSM total mass loading to mass loadings calculated from SMPS, and UHSAS particle size distribution data.