Source Quantification of South Asian Black Carbon Aerosols with Isotopes and Modeling

• Black carbon (BC) aerosols perturb climate and impoverish air quality/ human health-affecting similar to 1.5 billion people in South Asia. However, the lack of source-diagnostic observations of BC is hindering the evaluation of uncertain bottom-up emission inventories (EIs) and thereby also models/policies. Here, we present dual-isotope-based (Delta C-14/delta C-13) fingerprinting of wintertime BC at two receptor sites of the continental outflow. Our results show a remarkable similarity in contributions of biomass and fossil combustion, both from the site capturing the highly populated highly polluted Indo-Gangetic Plain footprint (IGP; Delta C-14-f(biomass) = 50 +/- 3%) and the second site in the N. Indian Ocean representing a wider South Asian footprint (52 +/- 6%). Yet, both sites reflect distinct delta C-13-fingerprints, indicating a distinguishable contribution of C-4-biomass burning from peninsular India (PI). Tailored-model-predicted seasonaveraged BC concentrations (700 +/- 440 ng m(-3)) match observations (740 +/- 250 ng m(-3)), however, unveiling a systematically increasing model-observation bias (+19% to -53%) through winter. Inclusion of BC from open burning alone does not reconcile predictions (f(biomass) = 44 +/- 8%) with observations. Direct source-segregated comparison reveals regional offsets in anthropogenic emission fluxes in EIs, overestimated fossil-BC in the IGP, and underestimated biomass-BC in PI, which contributes to the model-observation bias. This ground-truthing pinpoints uncertainties in BC emission sources, which benefit both climate/air-quality modeling and mitigation policies in South Asia.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)