Omnipresence of biological material in the atmosphere

Jaenicke, R.; Matthias‐Maser, Sabine; Gruber, Sabine

doi:10.1071/en07021

Cited by 86 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…For example, observations of particles with radius greater than 0.2 µm between 2000 and 2008 in Mainz, Germany, found that between 5 and 50 % of particle volume was composed of primary biological aerosol particles; at Lake Baikal, Russia, an average of ca. 20 % of particles was observed to be PBAP (by number and volume; particles with radius > 0.2 µm) (Jaenicke et al, 2007). Measurements in the Amazon rainforest found that 40 % of submicron and up to 80 % of supermicron particles were primary biological particles (Graham et al, 2003).…”

Section: S M Burrows Et Al: Impact Of Particle Characteristics On mentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating bacteria emissions from inversion of atmospheric transport: sensitivity to modelled particle characteristics

2013

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Model-simulated transport of atmospheric trace components can be combined with observed concentrations to obtain estimates of ground-based sources using various inversion techniques. These approaches have been applied in the past primarily to obtain source estimates for long-lived trace gases such as CO₂. We consider the application of similar techniques to source estimation for atmospheric aerosols, using as a case study the estimation of bacteria emissions from different ecosystem regions in the global atmospheric chemistry and climate model ECHAM5/MESSy-Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC).

Source estimation via Markov Chain Monte Carlo is applied to a suite of sensitivity simulations, and the global mean emissions are estimated for the example problem of bacteria-containing aerosol particles. We present an analysis of the uncertainties in the global mean emissions, and a partitioning of the uncertainties that are attributable to particle size, activity as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), the ice nucleation scavenging ratios for mixed-phase and cold clouds, and measurement error.

For this example, uncertainty due to CCN activity or to a 1 μm error in particle size is typically between 10% and 40% of the uncertainty due to observation uncertainty, as measured by the 5–95th percentile range of the Monte Carlo ensemble. Uncertainty attributable to the ice nucleation scavenging ratio in mixed-phase clouds is as high as 10–20% of that attributable to observation uncertainty. Taken together, the four model parameters examined contribute about half as much to the uncertainty in the estimated emissions as do the observations. This was a surprisingly large contribution from model uncertainty in light of the substantial observation uncertainty, which ranges from 81–870% of the mean for each of ten ecosystems for this case study. The effects of these and other model parameters in contributing to the uncertainties in the transport of atmospheric aerosol particles should be treated explicitly and systematically in both forward and inverse modelling studies

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Section: S M Burrows Et Al: Impact Of Particle Characteristics On mentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating bacteria emissions from inversion of atmospheric transport: sensitivity to modelled particle characteristics

2013

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“…Because of the mixing of biomaterials with nonbiomaterials in the atmosphere, or in soils or water (from which aerosols may be generated), a significant fraction of aerosols are complex mixtures of biological and nonbiological materials. Some measurements of proteins in aerosol particles indicate that around 20% of atmospheric airborne particles contain significant amounts of protein (9,10), although most measurements of individual aerosols do not look for protein as one of the molecular types.…”

Section: Bioaerosols and Other Organic Carbon Aerosolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Airborne biological particles (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10) are important in the transmission of diseases (11,12) of humans (e.g., tuberculosis, influenza), farm animals (e.g., coccidioidomycosis, anthrax), agricultural crops (e.g., black stem rust), and trees (e.g., white pine blister rust). Airborne pollens and proteins shed from household pets can cause allergies.…”

Section: Bioaerosols and Other Organic Carbon Aerosolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fluorescence of Bacteria, Pollens, and Naturally Occurring Airborne Particles: Excitation/Emission Spectra

Hill¹,

Mayo²,

Chang³

2009

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“…The share of atmospheric aerosol composition belonging to PBAP is large and possibly underestimated (Jaenicke et al, 2007), but is also very uncertain. Estimates of relative PBAP fraction from global models and local measurements reveal large differences between reports.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional-scale simulations of fungal spore aerosols using an emission parameterization adapted to local measurements of fluorescent biological aerosol particles

et al. 2015

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Abstract. Fungal spores as a prominent type of primary biological aerosol particles (PBAP) have been incorporated into the COSMO-ART (Consortium for Small-scale ModellingAerosols and Reactive Trace gases) regional atmospheric model. Two literature-based emission rates for fungal spores derived from fungal spore colony counts and chemical tracer measurements were used as a parameterization baseline for this study. A third, new emission parameterization for fluorescent biological aerosol particles (FBAP) was adapted to field measurements from four locations across Europe. FBAP concentrations can be regarded as a lower estimate of total PBAP concentrations. Size distributions of FBAP often show a distinct mode at approx. 3 µm, corresponding to a diameter range characteristic for many fungal spores. Previous studies for several locations have suggested that FBAP are in many cases dominated by fungal spores. Thus, we suggest that simulated FBAP and fungal spore concentrations obtained from the three different emission parameterizations can be compared to FBAP measurements. The comparison reveals that simulated fungal spore concentrations based on literature emission parameterizations are lower than measured FBAP concentrations. In agreement with the measurements, the model results show a diurnal cycle in simulated fungal spore concentrations, which may develop partially as a consequence of a varying boundary layer height between day and night. Temperature and specific humidity, together with leaf area index (LAI), were chosen to drive the new emission parameterization which is fitted to the FBAP observations. The new parameterization results in similar root mean square errors (RMSEs) and correlation coefficients compared to the FBAP observations as the previously existing fungal spore emission parameterizations, with some improvements in the bias. Using the new emission parameterization on a model domain covering western Europe, FBAP in the lowest model layer comprise a fraction of 15 % of the total aerosol mass over land and reach average number concentrations of 26 L −1 . The results confirm that fungal spores and biological particles may account for a major fraction of supermicron aerosol particle number and mass concentration over vegetated continental regions and should thus be explicitly considered in air quality and climate studies.

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Omnipresence of biological material in the atmosphere

Cited by 86 publications

References 25 publications

Estimating bacteria emissions from inversion of atmospheric transport: sensitivity to modelled particle characteristics

Estimating bacteria emissions from inversion of atmospheric transport: sensitivity to modelled particle characteristics

Fluorescence of Bacteria, Pollens, and Naturally Occurring Airborne Particles: Excitation/Emission Spectra

Regional-scale simulations of fungal spore aerosols using an emission parameterization adapted to local measurements of fluorescent biological aerosol particles

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