Interpretation of atmospheric particles at an urban area

Simultaneous measurements of atmospheric aerosols and suspended particulate matter (SPM) have been undertaken at Kinki University campus in Higashi-Osaka in order to monitor the urban environment. The sun/sky photometry has been made as a NASA/AERONET station since 2002, and the SPM-613D (Kimoto Electric) has been taking measurements of the SPM concentrations such as TSP, PM10, PM2.5, and OBC at the same site since March 15, 2004. The relationship between aerosol properties obtained from radiometry with AERONET and the SPM measurements is examined. It is found that there is a linear correlation between SPM concentrations and aerosol properties, which indicates that aerosol characteristics can be estimated from SPM data, and vice versa. Furthermore chemical analysis of the SPM sampling strongly suggests the really complicated features of the atmospheric particles at Higashi-Osaka. In other words, it is shown that the air quality of the Higashi-Osaka site is poor due to not only anthropogenic particles by local emissions, such as diesel vehicles and chemical industries, but also due to dust particles coming from continental desert areas by large scale climatic conditions