Publications by authors named "W Maenhaut"
Article Synopsis
- The role of atmospheric deposition in supplying nutrients to phytoplankton, the base of marine food webs, is a crucial Earth system science question.
- Various sources like pollution, wildfires, and desert dust release nutrients that affect remote ocean ecosystems through aerosol deposition.
- This review consolidates current research, experimental impacts, and new observations on nutrient contributions from different aerosol sources, highlighting their variability and effects on ocean biogeochemistry.
Article Synopsis
- To control COVID-19 in China, many human activities were reduced nationally, leading to a study of air quality by measuring PM-related elements at a rural site during specific time frames (before, during, and after lockdown).
- Nine major air pollution sources were identified, with fireworks burning, coal combustion, and vehicle emissions being prominent before the lockdown, while these dynamics shifted during and after the control period.
- The study found that while vehicle emissions increased during the lockdown due to proximity to a hospital, overall reductions in pollution were significant from industrial sources, particularly in areas influenced by northwest air mass transport.
Direct infusion analysis using soft ionization techniques coupled to ultra-high-resolution mass spectrometers (UHRMS) allows screening of thousands of organic species in complex samples. Despite the high analytical throughput of direct infusion, this technique is known to be prone to matrix effects caused by changes in the ionization efficiency of an analyte, ion suppression, or enhancement due to the presence of certain compounds and inorganic salts in the sample. In this study we compared two soft ionization sources, that is, heated electrospray ionization (HESI) and nano-ESI for the analysis of atmospheric aerosol samples in the negative ionization mode.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIsoprene (CH) is the main non-methane hydrocarbon emitted into the global atmosphere. Despite intense research, atmospheric transformations of isoprene leading to secondary organic aerosol (SOA) are still not fully understood, including its multiphase chemical reactions. Herein, we report on the detailed structural characterization of atmospherically relevant isoprene-derived organosulfates (OSs) with a molecular weight (MW) of 212 (CHSO), which are abundantly present in both ambient fine aerosol (PM) and laboratory-generated isoprene SOA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCarbonaceous aerosols in high emission areas attract worldwide attention of the scientific community and the public due to their adverse impacts on the environment, human health and climate. However, long-term continuous hourly measurements are scarce on the regional scale. In this study, a one-year hourly measurement (from December 1, 2016 to November 30, 2017) of organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC) in airborne fine particles was performed using semi-continuous OC/EC analyzers in Beijing, Tianjin, Shijiazhuang and Tangshan in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region in China, which is one of high emission areas in China, even in the world.
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