A43C-0285
AMS Observations over Coastal California from the Biological and Oceanic Atmospheric Study (BOAS)
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Kelvin Hamilton Bates1, Matthew Mitchell Coggon1, Natasha Hodas1, Arnaldo Negron2, Amber M Ortega3, Ewan Crosbie4, Armin Sorooshian5, Athanasios Nenes2, Richard C Flagan1 and John Seinfeld1, (1)California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (2)Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States, (3)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (4)NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, United States, (5)University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States
Abstract:
In July 2015, fifteen research flights were conducted on a US Navy Twin Otter aircraft as part of the Biological and Oceanic Atmospheric Study (BOAS) campaign. The flights took place near the California coast at Monterey, to investigate the effects of sea surface temperature and algal blooms on oceanic particulate emissions, the diurnal mixing of urban pollution with other airmasses, and the impacts of biological aerosols on the California atmosphere. The aircraft’s payload included an aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS), a differential mobility analyzer, a cloud condensation nuclei counter, a counterflow virtual impactor, a cloudwater collector, and two instruments designed to detect biological aerosols – a wideband integrated biological spectrometer and a SpinCon II – as well as a number of meteorology and aerosol probes, two condensation particle counters, and instruments to measure gas-phase CO, CO2, O3, and NOx. Here, we describe in depth the objectives and outcomes of BOAS and report preliminary results, primarily from the AMS. We detail the spatial characteristics and meteorological variability of speciated aerosol components over a strong and persistent bloom of Pseudo-Nitzschia, the harmful algae that cause ‘red tide’, and report newly identified AMS markers for biological particles. Finally, we compare these results with data collected during BOAS over urban, forested, and agricultural environments, and describe the mixing observed between oceanic and terrestrial airmasses.
