Concepts on Aerosol Characterization

R.B. HusarWashington University in St. Louis

Presented at

EPA – OAQPS Seminar

Research Triangle Park, NC, April 4, 2005

Regional Haze Rule: Natural Aerosol

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

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

NAAMS: National Ambient Air Monitoring Strategy and NCore

Applications

Satellite applications to Smoke/PM management

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

Decision Support Systems

Standards Based Products

Platforms, Sensors

Data Distribution Handling

TaskingDistribution

Processing

Exploitation

NASA ESE Information

Cycle

AirQuality

AssessmentCompare to GoalsPlan ReductionsTrack Progress

Controls (Actions)

Monitoring(Sensing)

Set GoalsCAAA

NAAQS

AQ Management

Loop

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

FASTNET Fast Aerosol Sensing Tools for Natural Event Tracking

DataFed 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)

Scientific Challenge: Description of smoke

• 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.

Dimension Abbr. Data SourcesSpatial dimensions X, Y Satellites, dense networks

Height Z Lidar, soundings

Time T Continuous monitoring

Particle size D Size-segregated sampling

Particle Composition C Speciated analysis

Particle Shape/Form F Microscopy

Ext/Internal Mixture M Microscopy

Particulate matter, incl. smoke is complex because of its multi-dimensionality

It takes at leas 8 independent dimensions to describe the PM concentration pattern

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.

Satellite-Integral

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

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

Status: CATT & FASTNET have been Eaten by DataFed.Net