Regional and local new particle formation events observed in the Yangtze River Delta region, China

To study the spatial inhomogeneity of new particle formation (NPF) in the polluted atmosphere of China, we conducted simultaneous measurements at an urban site near a petrochemical industrial area and a regional background site in the Yangtze River Delta region from September to November 2015. At the urban site we observed a type of local NPF event (number of events: n = 5), in which nucleation was limited to a small area but persisted for 6.8 h on average during the daytime. Formation rates of 5 nm particles (J5) were found to be correlated positively with the H2SO4 proxy (log J5 versus log[H2SO4] slope near 1) in both local and regional events. Furthermore, J5 was enhanced by the anthropogenic volatile organic carbon (VOC) plumes from nearby industrial area in the local events compared to the regional events. Size-dependent aerosol dynamics calculation showed that in comparison with the observed regional events, the local events were featured with high nucleation rate (J1.3 > 1000 cm−3 s−1), high growth rate of sub-3 nm particles (GRsub-3 > 20 nm h−1), and high number concentration of nucleation mode particles (mean peak N5-20: 6 × 104 cm−3). Considering these features, the local NPF events of anthropogenic origin may also be an important contributor to cloud condensation nuclei concentrations in urban and regional scales. In addition, the comparison of simultaneous regional NPF events between the two sites (number of events: n = 7) suggested that regional NPF intensity may be underestimated by the single-point measurement at an urban site, due to the heterogeneity of air masses.