References

ACPD

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions

ACPD

1680-7375

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acpd-7-469-2007

Size-segregated mass distributions of aerosols over Eastern Mediterranean: seasonal variability and comparison with AERONET columnar size-distributions

Gerasopoulos

¹ ³ Koulouri

¹ Kalivitis

¹ Kouvarakis

¹ Saarikoski

² Mäkelä

² Hillamo

² Mihalopoulos

Environmental Chemical Processes Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, University of Crete, P.O. Box 2208, 71003 Heraklion, Greece

Finnish Meteorological Institute, Air Quality Research, Erik Palmenin aukio 1, 00101, Helsinki, Finland

now at: National Observatory of Athens, Insitute for Environmental Science and Sustainable Development, Athens, Greece

15 01 2007

7 1 469 497

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.

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The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/469/2007/acpd-7-469-2007.pdf

This work provides long-term (2004–2006) size segregated measurements of aerosol mass at a remote coastal station in the southern Europe, with the use of size-selective samplings (SDI impactor). PM2.5 and PM1 account for 60% and 40% of PM10 mass in average, respectively. Seven distinct modes were identified in the range 0–10 μm and the dominant were the "Accumulation 1" (0.25–0.55 μm) and the "Coarse 2" (3–7 μm) modes. Different sources for submicron and supermicron particles were identified, the first being related to local/regional and transported pollution with maximum in summer and the latter to dust from deserted areas in Northern Africa maximizing in spring. The representativity of the ground-based measurements for the total column was also investigated by comparing the measured aerosol mass distributions with the AERONET volume size distribution data and similar seasonal patterns were revealed.

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