Measurement report: The effect of aerosol chemical composition onlight scattering due to the hygroscopic swelling effect

Abstract. Liquid water in aerosol particles has a significant effect on optical properties, especially on light scattering, whose dependence on chemical composition is investigated here using measurements made in southern Beijing in 2019. The effect is measured by the enhancement of aerosol hygroscopic factor, f(RH = 85 %, 525 nm), which is found to be positively and negatively impacted by the proportions of inorganic and organic matters respectively. Black carbon is also negatively correlated. The positive impact is more robust when the inorganic matter mass fraction was smaller than 40 % (correlation coefficient, R = 0.93) which becomes weaker as the inorganic matter mass fraction gets larger (R = 0.48). A similar pattern was also found in the negative impact for organic matter mass fraction. Nitrate played a more significant role in aerosol hygroscopicity than sulfate in Beijing. However, the deliquescence point of ambient aerosols was at about RH = 80 % when the ratio of the sulfate mass concentration to the nitrate mass concentration of the aerosol was high (mostly higher than ~4). Two schemes to parameterize f(RH) were developed in accounting for the deliquescent and non-deliquescent effects. Using only one f(RH) parameterization scheme to fit all f(RH) processes would incur large errors. A piecewise parameterization scheme is proposed, which can better describe deliquescence and reduces uncertainties in simulating aerosol hygroscopicity.