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Atmosphere
Special Issues
Global Black Carbon Aerosols
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Global Black Carbon Aerosols

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Aerosols".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2022) | Viewed by 5869

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Xiaolin Zhang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Atmospheric Physics, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing 210044, China
Interests: atmospheric physics and atmospheric environment; atmospheric remote sensing and atmospheric sounding
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Mao Mao

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Atmosphere Science and Remote Sensing, Wuxi University, Wuxi 214105, China
Interests: atmospheric physics and atmospheric environment; atmospheric remote sensing and atmospheric sounding
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Light-absorbing black carbon (BC), emitted from incomplete combustion of fossil fuel, biofuel, and biomass, is one of the strongest absorptive aerosols for solar radiation, and is one of the frontal research fields in current atmospheric studies. Once emitted into the atmosphere, BC particles quickly become inhomogeneous during aging processes. BC and its mixtures directly influence local and global climate by strongly absorbing solar radiation. Due to the complexity in geometry and mixing structures, our understanding of BC optical properties is still limited, which makes BC, especially aged BC, one of the largest uncertainties in estimations of aerosol radiative forcing.

This Special Issue focuses on the measurement and modeling of the physicochemical and radiative properties of BC aerosols, including chemical composition, size distribution, mixing state, and optical properties, spatial and temporal distributions, and source apportionment. Moreover, novel methods and techniques for remote sensing of BC properties and other topics related to climate effects of BC and aged BC are also welcome.

Dr. Xiaolin Zhang
Dr. Mao Mao
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • black carbon
  • radiative properties
  • climate effects
  • modeling
  • remote sensing
  • source region

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 2237 KiB  
Article
Impact of Vehicle Soot Agglomerates on Snow Albedo
by Sofía González-Correa, Diego Gómez-Doménech, Rosario Ballesteros, Magín Lapuerta, Diego Pacheco-Ferrada, Raúl P. Flores, Lina Castro, Ximena Fadic-Ruiz and Francisco Cereceda-Balic
Atmosphere 2022, 13(5), 801; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos13050801 - 13 May 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1767
Abstract
Snow covers are very sensitive to contamination from soot agglomerates derived from vehicles. A spectroradiometric system covering a wavelength from 300 to 2500 nm with variable resolution (from 2.2 to 7.0 nm) was used to characterize the effect of soot derived from a [...] Read more.
Snow covers are very sensitive to contamination from soot agglomerates derived from vehicles. A spectroradiometric system covering a wavelength from 300 to 2500 nm with variable resolution (from 2.2 to 7.0 nm) was used to characterize the effect of soot derived from a diesel vehicle whose exhaust stream was oriented towards a limited snowed area. The vehicle was previously tested in a rolling test bench where particle number emissions and size distributions were measured, and fractal analysis of particle microscopic images was made after collecting individual agglomerates by means of an electrostatizing sampler. Finally, the experimental results were compared to modelled results of contaminated snow spectral albedo obtained with a snow radiative transfer model developed by our research group (OptiPar) and with other models. Both experimental and modelled results show that increasingly accumulated soot mass reduces the snow albedo with a constant rate of around 0.03 units per mg/kg, with a predominant effect on the UV-VIS range. Based on the small size of the primary particles (around 25 nm), the Rayleigh-Debye-Gans approximation, further corrected to account for the effect of multiple scattering within the agglomerates, was revealed as an appropriate technique in the model. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Black Carbon Aerosols)
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13 pages, 2103 KiB  
Article
Scavenging of Black Carbon Aerosols by Radiation Fog in Urban Central China
by Xiaolin Zhang, Yu Zhou, Yuanzhi Wang, Aojie Huang, Chang Gao, Siqi He and Mao Mao
Atmosphere 2022, 13(2), 205; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos13020205 - 27 Jan 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1885
Abstract
Radiation fog episodes are characterized by aerosol radiative properties measured at Hefei in urban central China, which hopefully benefits numerical weather prediction and air quality improvement for local governments. In this study, a high mean aerosol optical depth (AOD) is seen over Hefei [...] Read more.
Radiation fog episodes are characterized by aerosol radiative properties measured at Hefei in urban central China, which hopefully benefits numerical weather prediction and air quality improvement for local governments. In this study, a high mean aerosol optical depth (AOD) is seen over Hefei during the sampling period, whereas an AOD of ~3.0 at 550 nm is observed during the fog episodes. We redefine the fog scavenging coefficient based on its starting and ending points in time, and a black carbon (BC) scavenging coefficient of 30% is observed. Meanwhile, the fog process cannot reduce aerosol number concentrations at size bins between 0.5 and 0.6 μm, whereas a mean particle scavenging coefficient of 21% at sizes within 0.6–1 μm is seen. Significantly large median aerosol scattering coefficient (2690 Mm−1) and absorption coefficient (446 Mm−1) at 550 nm, and low scattering Angstrom exponent in fog are observed, while distinctive particle size distributions between fog and haze are shown. Particle mean size distribution in fog is lower than that in haze at size bins between 0.7 and 2.1 μm, whereas the reverse is true for sizes within 0.5–0.7 μm and larger than 2.1 μm. Aerosol scattering during fog episodes undergoes a bigger increase than particle absorption, and this increase of scattering in fog is even higher than in haze. Median single scattering albedos of 0.86, 0.82, and 0.76 at 550 nm and aerosol radiative forcing efficiencies of −15.0, −14.0, and −10.0 W/m2 are seen for fog, haze and clear periods, respectively, and more negative radiative forcing efficiency emphasizes the significance of fog episodes on climate forcing. Our study clearly reveals the changes of aerosol radiative properties during radiation fog, particularly a synchronous variation of fog aerosol backscattering ratio with the visibility, indicating that more large particles are formed with fog becoming thicker and are scavenged with the dissipation of fog. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Black Carbon Aerosols)
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13 pages, 1911 KiB  
Article
Significance of Absorbing Fraction of Coating on Absorption Enhancement of Partially Coated Black Carbon Aerosols
by Xiaolin Zhang, Yuanzhi Wang, Yu Zhou, Junyao Wang and Mao Mao
Atmosphere 2021, 12(11), 1422; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/atmos12111422 - 28 Oct 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1559
Abstract
Black carbon (BC), particularly internally mixed and aged BC, exerts a significant influence on the environment and climate. Black carbon coated by non-absorbing materials shows an enhancement of BC absorption, whereas absorptive coatings on BC can reduce the BC absorption enhancement. In this [...] Read more.
Black carbon (BC), particularly internally mixed and aged BC, exerts a significant influence on the environment and climate. Black carbon coated by non-absorbing materials shows an enhancement of BC absorption, whereas absorptive coatings on BC can reduce the BC absorption enhancement. In this paper we use the multiple-sphere T-matrix method to accurately model the influence of the absorbing volume fraction of absorbing coatings on the reduction of the absorption enhancement of partially coated BC. The reduction of the absorption enhancement due to the absorbing coating exhibited a strong sensitivity to the absorbing volume fraction of the coating, and no reduction of BC absorption enhancement was seen for BC particles with non-absorbing coatings. We found that coatings with higher absorbing volume fraction, greater coated volume fraction of BC, higher shell/core ratio, and larger coated BC particle size caused stronger reductions of the BC absorption enhancement, whereas the impact of the BC’s fractal dimension was negligible. Moreover, the sensitivity of the reduction of absorption enhancement resulting from the ratio of the absorbing coating shell to the BC core increased for coatings with higher absorbing volume fractions, higher coated volume fractions of BC, or larger particle sizes, although this effect was weaker than the sensitivities to size distribution, absorbing volume fraction of coating, and coated volume fraction of BC. Reductions in the absorption enhancements resulting from the absorbing coating for partially coated BC with various size distributions typically varied in the range of 0.0–0.24 for thin coatings with shell/core ratio of 1.5 and between 0.0 and 0.43 for thick coatings with shell/core ratio of 2.7. In addition, we propose an empirical formula relating the reduction of BC absorption enhancement to the absorbing volume fraction of the coating, which could inform a quantitative understanding and further applications. Our study indicates the significance of the absorbing volume fraction of coatings on the absorption properties of BC. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Black Carbon Aerosols)
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