Abstract
Protecting the population from aerosol pollution relies on forecasts using models with aerosol composition, yet the respective contributions of aerosol components are poorly known. In particular, the contribution of inorganic condensable particulate matter (PM) to aerosols is likely to be underestimated in most models because condensable particulate matter exceeds the amount of filterable particulate matter in emissions from stationary combustion sources. Moreover, condensable particulate matter is rarely included in current emission inventories. Here, we estimated the emissions of inorganic condensable particulate matter from stationary combustion sources based on monitoring information in China. Then we modeled the contributions of condensable particulate matter to simulated inorganic aerosols, e.g., sulfate, ammonium, and nitrate by designing a series of sensitivity simulation scenarios. The results show that the estimated emissions of inorganic components over mainland China are increased about five times after including inorganic condensable particulate matter, for both 2014 and 2017. Specifically, taking into account the inorganic condensable particulate matter, increased the average concentrations of sulfate by 104%, ammonium by 10%, nitrate by 11%, and PM2.5 by 21% for the Hangzhou site in December 2017. Similarly, the simulated average daily concentrations of sulfate from December 3 to 31, 2017, more than doubled, increasing from 3.17 to 8.41 μg m−3 for Gucheng, 7.70 to 16.75 μg m−3 for Chengdu, 4.08 to 9.43 μg m−3 for Lin’an, and 3.19 to 7.22 μg m−3 for Dalian.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the comprehensive data collection and sharing platform for atmospheric environmental science as well as the CERN Atmospheric Science Branch of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for providing measurement data of inorganic ions.
Funding
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 42175084, 21577126, and 41561144004), the Department of Science and Technology of China (grant nos. 2018YFC0213506 and 2018YFC0213503), and the National Research Program for Key Issues in Air Pollution Control in China (grant no. DQGG0107). Pengfei Li was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 22006030), the Science and Technology Program of Hebei Province (grant no. 22343702D), the Research Foundation of Education Bureau of Hebei (grant no. BJ2020032), and the Initiation Fund of Hebei Agricultural University (grant no. 412201904).
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SY and PL conceived and designed the research. ML performed the model simulations. ML conducted data analysis. XC, ZS, WL, XZ, EL, DR, and JHS contributed to the scientific discussions. MZ, YS, ZL, and JJ provided observational data. SY, ML, PL, and JHS wrote and revised the manuscript.
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Li, M., Yu, S., Li, P. et al. Unrecognized pollution by inorganic condensable particulate matter in the atmosphere. Environ Chem Lett 22, 49–56 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-023-01644-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-023-01644-9