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Aerosol emissions in South Asia are large. The emitted aerosols can travel significant distances and, during the Asian southwest monsoon especially, are prone to modification through cloud processing and wet scavenging while being transported. The scale of emissions and transport means that the global climate impact of these aerosols are sensitive to modification en route, but the process-level understanding is still largely lacking. In this study, we analyse long-term aerosol data measured at an observatory established in Hanimaadhoo, Republic of Maldives, to investigate the long-term properties of aerosols over the Indian Ocean as well as to understand the effect of precipitation on the aerosol particle size distribution during long-range transport. The observatory location is ideal because it is a receptor site with little local influence, and, depending on the season, receives either polluted air masses coming from the Indian subcontinent or clean marine air masses from the Indian Ocean. We analysed the sub-micron particle number size distribution measured during the years 2004-2008, and 2014 2017, and this is the first inter-seasonal longterm study of the sub-micron aerosol features in the region. The aerosol origin and its relative exposure to wet scavenging during long-range transport were analysed using back-trajectory analysis from HYSPLIT. By comparing aerosol measurements to precipitation along its transport, this study shows that there is a substantial change in particle number size distributions and concentrations depending on the amount of rainfall during transport. During the southwest monsoon season, the aerosol size distribution was notably bimodal and total particle concentrations clearly reduced in comparison with the prevailing aerosol size distribution during the northeast monsoon season. Precipitation during transport usually corresponded with a greater reduction in accumulation mode concentrations than for smaller sizes, and the shape of the median size distribution showed a clear dependence on the trajectory origin and route taken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents and evaluates the most comprehensive set to date of chemical, physical and optical properties of aerosols in the outflow from South Asia covering a full winter (Nov. 2014 - March 2015), here intercepted at the Indian Ocean receptor site of the Maldives Climate Observatory in Hanimaadhoo (MCOH). Cluster analysis of air-mass back trajectories for MCOH, combined with AOD and meteorological data, demonstrate that the wintertime northern Indian Ocean is strongly influenced by aerosols transported from source regions with three major wind regimes, originating from the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP), the Bay of Bengal (BoB) and the Arabian Sea (AS). As much as 97 ± 3% of elemental carbon (EC) in the PM10 was also found in the fine mode (PM2.5). Other mainly anthropogenic constituents such as organic carbon (OC), non-sea-salt (nss) -K+, nss-SO42− and NH4+ were also predominantly in the fine mode (70-95%), particularly in the air masses from IGP. The combination at this large-footprint receptor observatory of consistently low OC/EC ratio (2.0 ± 0.5), strong linear relationships between EC and OC as well as between nss-K+ and both OC and EC, suggest a predominance of primary sources, with a large biomass burning contribution. The particle number-size distributions for the air masses from IGP and BoB exhibited clear bimodal shapes within the fine fraction with distinct accumulation (0.1 μm < d < 1 μm) and Aitken (0.025 μm < d < 0.10 μm) modes. This study also supports that IGP is a key source region for the wider South Asia and nearby oceans, as defined by the criteria that anthropogenic AODs exceed 0.3 and absorption AOD > 0.03. Taken together, the aerosol pollution over the northern Indian Ocean in the dry season is dominated by a well-mixed long-range transported regime of the fine-mode aerosols largely from primary combustion origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerosol particle optical properties were measured continuously between years 2013-2015 at the Marambio station in the Antarctic Peninsula. Annual cycles of particle scattering and absorption were studied and explained using measured particle chemical composition and the analysis of air mass transport patterns. The particle scattering was found elevated during the winter but the absorption did not show any clear annual cycle. The aerosol single scattering albedo at  nm was on average 0.96 0.10, with a median of 0.99. Aerosol scattering Ångström exponent increased during summer, indicating an increasing fraction of fine mode particles. The aerosol was mainly composed of sea salt, sulphate and crustal soil minerals, and most of the particle mass were in the coarse mode. Both the particle absorption and scattering were increased during high wind speeds. This was explained by the dominance of the primary marine sea-spray and wind-blown soil dust sources. In contrast, the back-trajectory analysis suggested that long-range transport has only a minor role as a source of absorbing aerosol at the peninsula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]