Measurement of turbulent fluxes of particles and volatile organic compounds, and the aerosol vertical distribution at the Amazonian low troposphere

Author(s)

Luciana Varanda Rizzo

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Física (IF/SBI)
• Defense date: 2006-12-12

Examining board members

Paulo Eduardo Artaxo Netto; Eduardo Landulfo; Humberto Ribeiro da Rocha; Manfredo Harri Tabacniks; Vito Roberto Vanin

• Advisor: Paulo Eduardo Artaxo Netto

Abstract

The Amazon tropical forest constitutes a complex ecosystem, in which the biosphere and the atmosphere are intrinsically related. To the natural biogenic sources, biomass burning emissions are summed up, changing significantly some aerosol characteristics, which in turn may affect important processes in the ecosystem. This work integrates observations of aerosol physical properties in Amazonia under two different conditions: i) turbulent transport between the forest canopy and the atmosphere (LBA/ZF2-2004 experiment); ii) evolution of biomass burning aerosol properties along the transport from the surface to the lower free troposphere (LBA/SMOCC-2202 experiment). Turbulent flux measurements were performed by eddy covariance in a tower at the Reserva Biológica de Cuieiras (AM), with an average particle flux of 0,05 106 m-2 s-1, denoting a net flux close to zero. During the day, particle emission was the predominant process, while the deposition dominated at night. Some events were associated to particle flux variability, such as: ascendant vertical gradients of coarse particles containing phosphorus and potassium at night; and events of abrupt increase in fine particles concentration also at night. Those events can be related to biogenic emissions. Isoprene and monoterpene fluxes (secondary organic aerosols precursors) reached, respectively, maximum values of 7.4 and 0.82 ?gC/m2/h around noon, without any apparent association with aerosol fluxes. Also, no clear events of nucleation were observed during the experiment. The aerosol vertical distribution were achieved from the compilation of 31 flights over impacted areas in Rondonia, and also over relatively clean areas on Western Amazon. Over the impacted areas, particle concentrations diminished with an average tax of 800 particles/cm3/km at the free troposphere. Vertical profiles showed that biomass burning aerosols have a tendency to accumulate at the top of the boundary layer, with possible optical implications at surface. Over impacted areas, an increase on particle average diameters, as well as on scattering and CCN activation efficiencies were observed at the free troposphere, possibly due to in cloud aerosol processes. Otherwise, over clean forest areas no significant differences on aerosol properties were observed inside the boundary layer and at the free troposphere. In this way, the two types of Amazonian aerosol particles were characterized in this work: biomass burning and natural biogenic particles. Results showed that biomass burning aging process affected significantly some physical properties of the aerosol population. As for biogenic particles, the biophysical mechanisms that govern their emission and deposition processed are still unclear, so that long range particle flux experiments are required for a better understanding of this issue. (AU)