Abstract
Carbonaceous aerosols have drawn increasing attention in scientific research because of their effects on both climate and human health. In particular, Black carbon (BC) is currently an issue, both at local and global scale; despite being a minor particulate mass fraction only, it has the second largest positive radiative forcing after CO2; it is a primary pollutant, emitted mainly from anthropogenic combustion sources (industrial emissions, road transport, domestic heating). Organic carbon (OC) predominantly contributes to particulate matter mass concentrations; it has both primary and secondary origin, coming from anthropogenic (combustion processes) and natural (sea-spray, biogenic emissions) sources. Recently, the scientific community has addressed Brown Carbon (BrC), which is a light-absorbing organic compound, of which the characteristics are still largely unknown. Understanding properties of different carbonaceous fractions, quantify relative natural and anthropogenic source contributions, harmonize measurements methods needs extensive research.
Long-term measurements at ECO site allowed: trend analysis of carbonaceous fractions (EC, OC, eBC) at the same site; an extensive inter-comparison study comparing two filter-based methods, that provide EC mass defined through the EUSAAR2 thermal-optical protocol and eBC (from MAAP) and, recently, also with online data from AE33 Aethalometer and TCA data.
During the seminar, the main results of studies focused on carbonaceous aerosol characterization and comparability of different measurement techniques will be presented, as well as future works to be conducted in the framework of the ITINERIS project.
Short bio
Eva Merico is a research scientist at the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the Italian National Research Council (CNR-ISAC), in Lecce. Since her PhD, her research interests have been focused on chemical and physical characterization of atmospheric aerosol, applying different methods and statistical approaches, to investigate aspects related to air quality and evaluation of source contribution. In detail, the main experimental activities included: data acquisition of gaseous pollutants and particulate matter in various field campaigns, thermo-optical determination of elemental and organic carbon (EC and OC), metal content analysis by XRF technique. Recently, ongoing work consists in investigation of comparability and harmonization of offline and online carbonaceous aerosol measurements, from different instruments operating at ECO site in Lecce.
E. Merico co-authored 24 publications (indexed SCOPUS and/or Web of Science) and almost 40 abstracts in national and international conferences.
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