The analysis of the atmospheric aerosol composition, clouds, and short-lived gas-phase species is of primary importance for climate and air quality research. To this aim, the coupling of different and multiple atmospheric techniques at ground-based stations are significant to develop and improve climate and air-quality models.
ACTRIS 2 is an European Research Infrastructure for the observation of Aerosol, Clouds and Trace gases, and consists of different observing stations, exploratory platforms as well as instruments calibration centers. In the framework of this infrastructure, a measurement campaign “ACTRIS-2 Mt. Cimone and Po Valley field Campaign 2017” (http://actris-cimone.isac.cnr.it/) is actually in progress (July 2017) with the aim of air quality monitoring in Bologna (as an urban background), Pietro Capofiume (BO) (as a rural area), and at Mt Cimone Italian Climate Observatory, with several research institutions from different countries involved.
As other short-lived climate species, black carbon (BC) is a pollutant able to affect the climate on a local scale due to the direct and indirect interaction with solar radiation. Moreover, it can be considered as a powerful indicator for assessing human health risk. For these reasons, part of this campaign is devoted to the measure of BC with several commercial and prototype instruments.
The ICMATE team in Milano is among the participants at this campaign and is involved in the BC measurements by using the prototype developed in the Milano lab and based on LII technique.
This instrument allows BC concentration measurements with a high spatial and time resolution, high sensitivity and a wide dynamic range (20 ng/m3 – 20 g/m3).
More details on the instrument can be found in this website and daily results of the campaign in http://actris-cimone.isac.cnr.it/
Contact information:
