Web Application for Atmospheric Aerosol Data Management: Software and Case Study in the Spanish Network on Environmental Differential Mobility Analysers

Abstract

SCALA© (Sampling Campaigns for Aerosols in the Low Atmosphere) is a web-based software system that was developed in a multidisciplinary manner to integrally support the documentation and the management and analysis of atmospheric aerosol data from sampling campaigns. The software development process applied considered the prototyping and the evolutionary approaches. The software product (SCALA©) allows for the comprehensive management of the sampling campaigns’ life cycle (management of the profiles and processes involved in the start-up, development and closure of a campaign) and provides support for both intra- and inter-campaigns data analysis. The pilot deployment of SCALA© considers the Spanish Network on Environmental Differential Mobility Analysers (DMAs) (REDMAAS) and the PROACLIM project. This research project involves, among other objectives, the study of temporal and spatial variations of the atmospheric aerosol through a set of microphysical properties (size distribution, optical properties, hygroscopicity, etc.) measured in several locations in Spain. The main conclusions regarding size distribution are presented in this work. These have been have been extracted through SCALA© from the data collected in the REDMAAS 2015 and 2019 intercomparison campaigns and two years (2015 and 2016) of measurements with two Scanning Mobility Particle Sizers (SMPS) at CIEMAT (Madrid, central Spain) and UDC (A Coruña, NW of Spain) sites.