Estimation of Source-Based Aerosol Optical Properties for Polydisperse Aerosols from Receptor Models

Abstract

We estimated source-based aerosol optical properties for polydisperse aerosols according to a chemical-species-resolved mass contribution method based on source apportionment. We investigated the sensitivity of aerosol optical properties based on PM2.5 (particulate matter that have a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers) monitoring results. These aerosols were composed of ions, metals, elemental carbon, and water-soluble organic carbon which includes humic-like carbon substances and water-soluble organic carbon. We calculated aerosols’ extinction coefficients based on the PM2.5 composition data and the results of a multivariate receptor model (Solver for Mixture Problem model, SMP). Based on the mass concentration of chemical composition and nine sources calculated with the SMP receptor model, we estimated the size-resolved mass extinction efficiencies for each aerosol source using a multilinear regression model. Consequently, this study quantitatively determined the size resolved sources contributing to the apportionment-based aerosol optical properties and calculated their respective contributions. The results show that source-resolved mass concentrations and extinction coefficients had varying contributions. This discrepancy between the source-based mass concentration and extinction coefficient was mainly due to differences between the source-dependent aerosol size distribution and the aerosol optical properties from different sources.