Carbonaceous aerosols (CA), composed of black carbon (BC) and organic matter (OM), significantly impact the climate. Light absorption properties of CA, particularly of BC and brown carbon (BrC), are crucial due to their contribution to global and regional warming. We present the absorption properties of BC (b) and BrC (b) inferred using Aethalometer data from 44 European sites covering different environments (traffic (TR), urban (UB), suburban (SUB), regional background (RB) and mountain (M)).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough many studies have discussed the impact of Europe's air quality, very limited research focused on the detailed phenomenology of ambient trace elements (TEs) in PM in urban atmosphere. This study compiled long-term (2013-2022) measurements of speciation of ambient urban PM from 55 sites of 7 countries (Switzerland, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, UK), aiming to elucidate the phenomenology of 20 TEs in PM in urban Europe. The monitoring sites comprised urban background (UB, n = 26), traffic (TR, n = 10), industrial (IN, n = 5), suburban background (SUB, n = 7), and rural background (RB, n = 7) types.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRisk assessment of pesticide impacts on remote ecosystems makes use of model-estimated degradation in air. Recent studies suggest these degradation rates to be overestimated, questioning current pesticide regulation. Here, we investigated the concentrations of 76 pesticides in Europe at 29 rural, coastal, mountain, and polar sites during the agricultural application season.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrimary Biogenic Organic Aerosols (PBOA) were recently shown to be produced by only a few types of microorganisms, emitted by the surrounding vegetation in the case of a regionally homogeneous field site. This study presents the first comprehensive description of the structure and main sources of airborne microbial communities associated with temporal trends in Sugar Compounds (SC) concentrations of PM in 3 sites under a climatic gradient in France. By combining sugar chemistry and DNA Metabarcoding approaches, we intended to identify PM-associated microbial communities and their main sources at three sampling-sites in France, under different climates, during the summer of 2018.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the present paper the activity of uranium isotopes measured in plants and aerosols taken downwind of the releases of three nuclear fuel settlements was compared between them and with the activity measured at remote sites. An enhancement of U activity as well as U/U anomalies and U are noticeable in wheat, grass, tree leaves and aerosols taken at the edge of nuclear fuel settlements, which show the influence of uranium chronic releases. Further plants taken at the edge of the studied sites and a few published data acquired in the same experimental conditions show that the U activity in plants is influenced by the intensity of the U atmospheric releases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs wood harvests are expected to increase to satisfy the need for bio-energy in Europe, quantifying atmospheric nutrient inputs in forest ecosystems is essential for forest management. Current atmospheric measurements only take into account the <0.45 μm fraction and dry deposition is generally modeled.
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