| Abstract: | Aerosols in the atmosphere not only degrade visibility, but are also detrimental to human health and transportation. In order to develop a method to estimate PM_(2.5) mass concentration from the widely measured visibility, a field campaign was conducted in Southwest China in January 2019. Visibility, ambient relative humidity(RH), PM_(2.5) mass concentrations and scattering coefficients of dry particles were measured. During the campaign, two pollution episodes, i.e., from 4-9 January and from 10-16 January, were encountered. Each of the two episodes could be divided into two periods. High aerosol hygroscopicity was found during the first period, when RH was higher than 80% at most of the time, and sometimes even approached 100%. The second period experienced a relatively dry but more polluted condition and aerosol hygroscopicity was lower than that during the first period. An empirical relationship between PM_(2.5) mass concentration and visibility(ambient aerosol extinction) under different RH conditions could thus be established. Based on the empirical relationship,PM_(2.5) mass concentration could be well estimated from visibility and RH. This method will be useful for remote sensing of PM_(2.5) mass concentration. |
