How to Get the Best from Low-Cost Particulate Matter Sensors: Guidelines and Practical Recommendations

Low-cost sensors based on the optical particle counter (OPC) are increasingly being used to collect particulate matter (PM) data at high space and time resolution. In spite of their huge explorative potential, practical guidelines and recommendations for their use are still limited. In this work, we outline a few best practices for the optimal use of PM low-cost sensors based on the results of an intensive field campaign performed in Bologna (44°30' N, 11°21' E; Italy) under different weather conditions. Briefly, the performances of a series of sensors were evaluated against a calibrated mainstream OPC with a heated inlet, using a robust approach based on a suite of statistical indexes capable of evaluating both correlations and biases in respect to the reference sensor. Our results show that the sensor performance is sensibly affected by both time resolution and weather with biases maximized at high time resolution and high relative humidity. Optimization of PM data obtained is therefore achievable by lowering time resolution and applying suitable correction factors for hygroscopic growth based on the inherent particle size distribution.

Using green infrastructure to improve urban air quality (GI4AQ)

As evidence for the devastating impacts of air pollution on human health continues to increase, improving urban air quality has become one of the most pressing tasks facing policy makers world-wide. Increasingly, and very often on the basis of conflicting and/or weak evidence, the introduction of green infrastructure (GI) is seen as a win-win solution to urban air pollution, reducing ground-level concentrations without imposing restrictions on traffic and other polluting activities. The impact of GI on air quality is highly context dependent, with models suggesting that GI can improve urban air quality in some situations, but be ineffective or even detrimental in others. Here we set out a novel conceptual framework explaining how and where GI can improve air quality, and offer six specific policy interventions, underpinned by research, that will always allow GI to improve air quality. We call GI with unambiguous benefits for air quality GI4AQ. However, GI4AQ will always be a third-order option for mitigating air pollution, after reducing emissions and extending the distance between sources and receptors.

Stirring effects in models of oceanic plankton populations

We present an overview and extend previous results on the effects of large scale oceanic transport processes on plankton population dynamics, considering different types of ecosystem models. We find that increasing stirring rate in an environment where the carrying capacity is non-uniformly distributed leads to an overall decrease of the effective carrying capacity of the system. This may lead to sharp regime shifts induced by stirring in systems with multiple steady states. In prey-predator type systems, stirring leads to resonant response of the population dynamics to fluctuations enhancing the spatial variability-patchiness-in a certain range of stirring rates. Oscillatory population models produce strongly heterogeneous patchy distribution of plankton blooms when the stirring is weak, while strong stirring may either synchronise the oscillatory dynamics, when the inhomogeneity is relatively weak, or suppress oscillations completely (oscillator death) by reducing the effective carrying capacity below the bifurcation point.

Fast chemical reaction in two-dimensional Navier-Stokes flow: initial regime

This paper studies an infinitely fast bimolecular chemical reaction in a two-dimensional biperiodic Navier-Stokes flow. The reactants in stoichiometric quantities are initially segregated by infinite gradients. The focus is placed on the initial stage of the reaction characterized by a well-defined one-dimensional material contact line between the reactants. Particular attention is given to the effect of the diffusion κ of the reactants. This study is an idealized framework for isentropic mixing in the lower stratosphere and is motivated by the need to better understand the effect of resolution on stratospheric chemistry in climate-chemistry models. Adopting a Lagrangian straining theory approach, we relate theoretically the ensemble mean of the length of the contact line, of the gradients along it, and of the modulus of the time derivative of the space-average reactant concentrations (here called the chemical speed) to the joint probability density function of the finite-time Lyapunov exponent λ with two times τ and τ[over ̃]. The time 1/λ measures the stretching time scale of a Lagrangian parcel on a chaotic orbit up to a finite time t, while τ measures it in the recent past before t, and τ[over ̃] in the early part of the trajectory. We show that the chemical speed scales like κ(1/2) and that its time evolution is determined by rare large events in the finite-time Lyapunov exponent distribution. The case of smooth initial gradients is also discussed. The theoretical results are tested with an ensemble of direct numerical simulations (DNSs) using a pseudospectral model.

Fast chemical reaction and multiple-scale concentration fields in singular vortices

Two species involved in a simple, fast reaction tend to become segregated in patches composed of a single of these reactants. These patches are separated by a boundary where the stoichiometric condition is satisfied and the reaction occurs, fed by diffusion. Stirred by advection, this boundary and the concentration fields within the patches may tend to present multiple-scale characteristics. Based on this segregated state, this paper aims at evaluating the temporal evolutions of the length of the boundary and diffusive flux of reactants across it, when concentrations presenting initial self-similar fluctuations are advected by a singular vortex. First the two sources of singularity, i.e., the self-similar initial conditions and the singular vortex, are considered separately. On the one hand, self-similar initial conditions are imposed to a diffusion-reaction system, for one- and two-dimensional cases. On the other hand, an imposed singular vortex advects initially on/off concentration fields, in combination with diffusion and reaction. This problem is addressed analytically, by characterizing the boundary by a box-counting dimension and the concentration fields by a Hölder exponent, and numerically, by direct numerical simulations of the advection-diffusion-reaction equations. Second, the way the two sources hang together shows that, depending on the self-similar properties of the initial concentration fields, the vortex promotes the chemical activity close to its inner smoothed-out core or close to the outer region where the boundary starts to spiral. For all the considered situations, the length of the boundary and the global reaction speed are found to evolve algebraically with time after a short transient and a good agreement is found between the analytical and numerical scaling laws.

Synchronization of oscillating reactions in an extended fluid system

We present experiments on the synchronization of a dynamical, chemical process in an extended, flowing, fluid system. The oscillatory Belousov-Zhabotinsky chemical reaction is the process studied, and the flow is an annular chain of counterrotating vortices. Azimuthal motion of the vortices is controlled externally, enabling us to vary the type of transport. We find that oscillations of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction synchronize throughout the extended fluid system only if transport in the flow is superdiffusive, with tracers in the flow undergoing rapid, distant jumps called Lévy flights.

Small scale structure in the atmosphere: implications for chemical composition and observational methods

Non-linearities in chemical processes are recognised as being important in a number of areas of atmospheric science. In this paper we show simulations using an idealised plume model which describes the relaxation of an urban plume into the background atmosphere. As might be anticipated, the initial conditions of NOx, O3 and VOCs within the plume and background are important in determining the chemistry downstream of the source, but crucially for this study, the rate of mixing (on timescales appropriate to the real atmosphere) is found to alter the composition of the atmosphere significantly. The model shows that NO3 chemistry can play a major role in the oxidation of biogenic VOCs present in the background atmosphere. In addition, the reaction of hydrocarbons with NO3 potentially has important implications for NOy speciation because a significant fraction of organic nitrates thus formed are sufficiently long-lived to leave the planetary boundary layer. A particularly critical result of the model is that under certain NOx conditions, O3 surface deposition can be significantly inhibited, with consequent effects on the O3 budget.

Reactions in flows with nonhyperbolic dynamics

We study the reaction dynamics of active particles that are advected passively by 2D incompressible open flows, whose motion is nonhyperbolic. This nonhyperbolicity is associated with the presence of persistent vortices near the wake, wherein fluid is trapped. We show that the fractal equilibrium distribution of the reactants is described by an effective dimension d(eff) , which is a finite resolution approximation to the fractal dimension. Furthermore, d(eff) depends on the resolution epsilon and on the reaction rate 1/tau . As tau is increased, the equilibrium distribution goes through a series of transitions where the effective dimension increases abruptly. These transitions are determined by the complex structure of Cantori surrounding the Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser (KAM) islands.

Chemical and biological activity in three-dimensional flows

We study the dynamics of active particles advected by three-dimensional (3D) open incompressible flows, both analytically and numerically. We find that 3D reactive flows have fundamentally different dynamical features from those in 2D systems. In particular, we show that the reaction's productivity per reaction step can be enhanced, with respect to the 2D case, while the productivity per unit time in some 3D flows goes to zero in the limit of high mixing rates, in contrast to the 2D behavior, in which the productivity goes to a finite constant. These theoretical predictions are validated by numerical simulations on a generic map model.

Universality in active chaos

Many examples of chemical and biological processes take place in large-scale environmental flows. Such flows generate filamental patterns which are often fractal due to the presence of chaos in the underlying advection dynamics. In such processes, hydrodynamical stirring strongly couples into the reactivity of the advected species and might thus make the traditional treatment of the problem through partial differential equations difficult. Here we present a simple approach for the activity in inhomogeneously stirred flows. We show that the fractal patterns serving as skeletons and catalysts lead to a rate equation with a universal form that is independent of the flow, of the particle properties, and of the details of the active process. One aspect of the universality of our approach is that it also applies to reactions among particles of finite size (so-called inertial particles).

New scaling law for the decay exponent of bimolecular reactions in unbounded transitional flows

We propose a new scaling law for global kinetics of the stoichiometric reaction A+B-->P in unsteady, transitional flows. We find in the nonlinear flow regime the decay as approximately t(-alpha) where alpha is related to a space-time scaling parameter psi as alpha proportional, variant psi(m), for the considered parameter range m=0.067. In the linear flow regime, we find that the maximum is alpha approximately 2/3 for psi approximately 1. The proposed scaling law should be useful for linking dynamical subgrid processes with reaction kinetics in a variety of transitional flow systems.

Mixing in vortical, chaotic and turbulent flows

Mixing is discussed in relation to stirring as reflected in the geometry of advected interfaces, the behaviour of fluid-element pairs and their separation rates. Stirring is different in vortical, chaotic and turbulent flows because of qualitative differences in spatio-temporal flow structure, thus giving rise to different mixing laws. Important applications of the mixing and stirring properties discussed in this review are chlorine deactivation and ozone depletion in stratospheric mid-latitudes.

Noise-induced enhancement of chemical reactions in nonlinear flows

Motivated by the problem of ozone production in atmospheres of urban areas, we consider chemical reactions of the general type: A+B-->2C, in idealized two-dimensional nonlinear flows that can generate Lagrangian chaos. Our aims differ from those in the existing work in that we address the role of transient chaos versus sustained chaos and, more importantly, we investigate the influence of noise. We find that noise can significantly enhance the chemical reaction in a resonancelike manner where the product of the reaction becomes maximum at some optimal noise level. We also argue that chaos may not be a necessary condition for the observed resonances. A physical theory is formulated to understand the resonant behavior. (c) 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Diffusivity dependence of ozone depletion over the midnorthern latitudes

The mixing and reaction properties of advected chemicals (and passive scalars) are determined by the fractal dimension D of the interface between the chemicals. We show that the scaling of the amount m of reacted chemicals with diffusivity kappa is m(0)-m(kappa) proportional, proportional to kappa(1-D/2) in the two-dimensional case. This relation is valid in a range of times and diffusivities where the diffusive length scales of the chemicals are within the range of scales where the chemical interface has a well-defined fractal dimension. We apply the relation to the problems of chlorine deactivation and ozone depletion over the midnorthern latitudes. We determine numerically the fractal dimension of an interface advected by stratospheric winds. This allows us, first, to explain the diffusivity dependence of chlorine deactivation and ozone depletion that was previously observed in numerical simulations (Tan et al., J. Geophys. Res., [Atmos.] 103, 1585 (1998)) and, second, to extrapolate the results of such simulations down to realistically low diffusivities.