Aerosol Physical Characteristics over the Yellow Sea During the KORUS-AQ Field Campaign: Observations and Air Quality Model Simulations

For understanding the aerosol characteristics over the Yellow Sea according to the air flow patterns in East Asia, the aerosol volume concentration distribution by particle size (size distribution) of the shipborne samples collected in the KORUS-AQ campaign is examined in conjunction with air quality (AQ) model simulations and air parcel trajectory analyses. Cluster analyses of the air parcel trajectories show that 42% of the collected air samples originated in Korea and Japan, 30% in inland/east-coast China, 16% in the highlands of Inner Mongolia, and 11% in the East China Sea. The aerosol size distribution varies characteristically according to the upstream path of individual trajectory clusters; particles of diameters 2 μm, indicating a mixed industrial-dust aerosol type in which the dust particles from the Inner Mongolia is mixed with fine particles in the industrialized northeast China. Model studies for cases of typical air flow trajectory groups show that the model simulates the spatial distribution of the satellite-observed particulate matter reasonably, but underestimates the observed volume concentration of fine particles <1 μm.