Regional variation of organic functional groups in aerosol particles on four U.S. east coast platforms during the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation 2004 campaign

Abstract

Submicron atmospheric aerosol samples were collected during the International Consortium for Atmospheric Research on Transport and Transformation (ICARTT) 2004 campaign on four platforms: Chebogue Point (Nova Scotia, Canada), Appledore Island (Maine), the CIRPAS Twin Otter over Ohio, and the NOAA R/V Ronald H. Brown in the Gulf of Maine. Saturated aliphatic C-C-H, unsaturated aliphatic C=C−H, aromatic C=C−H, organosulfur C-O-S, carbonyl C=O, and organic hydroxyl C-OH functional groups were measured by calibrated Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy at all four sampling platforms. The ratio of molar concentrations of carbonyl C=O to saturated aliphatic C-C-H groups was nearly constant at each sampling platform, with the Twin Otter samples having the lowest ratio at 0.1 and the three more coastal platforms having ratios of 0.4 and 0.5. Organic mass (OM) to organic carbon (OC) ratios follow similar trends for the four platforms, with the Twin Otter having the lowest ratio of 1.4 and the coastal platforms having slightly higher values typically between 1.5 and 1.6. Organosulfur compounds were occasionally observed. Collocated organic aerosol sampling with two Aerodyne aerosol mass spectrometers for OM, a Sunset Laboratory thermo-optical analysis instrument for OC, and an ion chromatography-particle into liquid sampler (IC-PILS) for speciated carboxylic acids provided comparable results for most of the project, tracking the time series of FTIR OM, OC, and carbonyl groups, respectively, and showing simultaneous peaks of similar magnitude during most of the project. The FTIR/IC-PILS comparison suggests that about 9% of the carbonyl groups found in submicron organic particles on the Twin Otter are typically associated with low molecular weight carboxylic acids.