ACPD Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ACPD 1680-7375 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acpd-12-1653-2012 Trajectory-based source area analysis of atmospheric fine particles, SO<sub>2</sub>, NO<sub>x</sub> and O<sub>3</sub> for the SMEAR II station in Finland in 1996–2008 Hulkkonen M. 1 Riuttanen L. 1 Dal Maso M. 1 Junninen H. 1 Kulmala M. 1 Department of Physics, P.O. Box 48, 00014, University of Helsinki, Finland 19 01 2012 12 1 1653 1685 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/12/1653/2012/acpd-12-1653-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/12/1653/2012/acpd-12-1653-2012.pdf

Source area analysis based on combining in situ measurements of trace gas or particle concentrations and back trajectories calculated for corresponding times has proven to be a valuable approach in atmospheric research; especially in investigating air pollution episodes, but also in e.g. tracing the source areas of air masses related to high vs. low concentrations of aerosol particles of different sizes at the receptor site. A statistical trajectory method used before by Sogacheva et al. (2005) was fine-tuned to take the presumable horizontal error in calculated trajectories into account, tested with SO<sub>2</sub> and validated by comparison against EMEP (European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme) emission data. In this work we apply the improved method for characterizing the source areas of atmospheric SO<sub>2</sub>, NO<sub>x</sub>, O<sub>3</sub> and aerosol particles of different size modes from the perspective of a Finnish measurement station located in Hyytiälä (61°51' N, 24°17' E). Our method proved useful for qualitative source area analysis of measured trace compounds. We applied it to study trends and seasonal variation in atmospheric pollutant transport during 13 yr at the SMEAR II station.

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