Concepts on Aerosol Characterization

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Concepts on Aerosol Characterization

• R.B. Husar
• Washington University in St. Louis

Presented at EPA OAQPS Seminar Research
Triangle Park, NC, April 4, 2005
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Regional Haze Rule Natural Aerosol
Natural haze is due to natural windblown dust,
biomass smoke and other natural processes
Man-made haze is due industrial activities AND
man-perturbed smoke and dust emissions A fraction
of the man-perturbed smoke and dust is assigned
to natural by policy decisions

• The goal is to attain natural conditions by 2064
• The baseline is established during 2000-2004
• The first SIP Natural Condition estimate in
  2008
• SIP Natural Condition Revisions every 10 yrs

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NAAMS National Ambient Air Monitoring Strategy
and NCore
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Satellite applications to Smoke/PM management
Decision Support Systems
Tasking
Distribution
NASA ESE Information Cycle
Data Distribution Handling
Platforms, Sensors
Processing
Standards Based Products
Exploitation

• Satellite applications to Smoke/PM management
• Observation-based smoke emissions input to
  dynamic and receptor models
• Real-time event analysis/forecasting for
  regulatory and public needs
• PM exceptional event waivers for NAAQS
• PM climatology for NAAQS spatial analysis
  complement NAAMS/Ncore
• Policy and SIP development NAAQS, Regional Haze
  rule Treaties

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FASTNET and DataFed pursues several NAAMS
recommendations

• Insightful Measurements
• Enhanced real-time data delivery to public
• Increase capacity for hazardous air pollutant
  measurements
• Increase in continuous PM measurements
• Support for research grade/technology transfer
  sites
• Auxiliary non-EPA data support
• Multiple pollutant monitoring
• Integration of sources, processes, effects
• Incorporate technological advances
• Information transfer technologies
• Continuous PM monitors
• High sensitivity instruments
• Model-monitor integration

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FASTNET Fast Aerosol Sensing Tools for Natural
Event TrackingDataFed Data Federation

• FASTNET is an open communal facility to study
  non-industrial (e.g. dust and smoke) aerosol
  events, including detection, tracking and impact
  on PM and haze.
• FASTNET output will be directly applicable, to
  public health protection, Regional Haze rule, SIP
  and model development as well as toward
  stimulating the scientific community.
• The main asset of FASTNET is the community of
  data analysts, modelers, managers and others
  participating in the production of actionable
  knowledge from observations, models and human
  reasoning
• The FASTNET community will be supported by a
  networking infrastructure based on open Internet
  standards (web services) and a set of web-tools
  evolving under the federated data system,
  DataFed.
• DataFed itself is under the umbrella of the
  interagency Earth Science Information Partners
  (ESIP) which includes NASA, NOAA and EPA (soon)

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Scientific Challenge Description of smoke
Particulate matter, incl. smoke is complex
because of its multi-dimensionality It takes at
leas 8 independent dimensions to describe the PM
concentration pattern

• Gaseous concentration g (X, Y, Z, T)
• Aerosol concentration a (X, Y, Z, T, D, C, F,
  M)
• The aerosol dimensions size D, composition C,
  shape F, and mixing M determine the impact on
  health, and welfare.

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Technical Challenge Characterization

• PM characterization requires many different
  instruments and analysis tools.
• Each sensor/network covers only a fraction of the
  8-D PM data space.
• Most of the 8D PM pattern is extrapolated from
  sparse measured data.

• Satellites, integrate over height H, size D,
  composition C, shape, and mixture dimensions
  these data need de-convolution of the integral
  measures.

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Temporal Scales of Aerosol Events

• A goal of the FASTNET project is to detect and
  document natural aerosol events in the context of
  the overall PM pattern
• Inherently, aerosol events are spikes in the time
  series of monitoring but the definition and
  documentation of events has been highly subjective

• Temporal variation occurs at many scales from
  micro scale (minutes) to secular scale (decades)
• At each scale the variation is dominated
  different combination of the key processes
  emission, transport, transformations and removal
• Natural aerosol events occur mostly at synoptic
  scale of 3-5 days

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Status CATT FASTNET have been Eaten by
DataFed.Net