title: Characterization of ambient black carbon and wood burning particles in two urban areas.
abstract: Previously it has been suggested that certain organic aerosol components of wood smoke have enhanced ultraviolet absorption at 370 nm relative to 880 nm in two-wavelength aethalometer measurements. This enhanced absorption could serve as an indicator of wood burning particles. Two-wavelength (370 nm and 880 nm) aethalometer measurements were made at urban sites in Rochester, New York and Laredo, Texas from August 1 to December 31, 2009 and from December 23, 2007 to January 2, 2008, respectively. In Rochester, Delta-C (UVBC(370 nm)- BC(880 nm)) values were higher by a factor of 3 during the night than during the day in November and December when residential wood burning was common. In Laredo, particularly high Delta-C values were observed on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve and were attributed to biomass burning and firework emissions. Exponential decay was found to be a good estimator for predicting BC concentrations at different wind speeds regardless of wind directions.
authors: Center for Air Resource Engineering and Science, Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY 13699-5708, USA.
authors: Yungang
authors: Y
authors: Wang
authors: Philip K
authors: PK
authors: Hopke
authors: Oliver V
authors: OV
authors: Rattigan
authors: Yifang
authors: Y
authors: Zhu