Aerosol Physical, Optical and Chemical Properties during African Dust Events at Cape San Juan (CPR)

Large amounts of atmospheric dust are lifted from the North African deserts and are transported by the trade winds over the Caribbean region, especially during the summer months. How African dust particles influence the earth's radiative budget is not well understood because these particles are highly variable and their physical, optical, and chemical properties are poorly characterized, especially when they are atmospherically processed as are those that travel from Africa to the Caribbean region. Here we present results of aerosol measurements performed at Cape San Juan (CPR), a ground-based station located at the northeastern tip of the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. We used a condensation particle counter to determine the particle number concentration, a sunphotometer (part of the AErosol RObotical NETwork, AERONET, aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov) to determine volume size distributions and aerosol optical thickness, and a 3-wavelength nephelometer and particle/soot absorption photometer to determine the scattering and absorption coefficients. Filter samples for chemical analyses were collected with stacked-filter units. Preliminary results show that African dust air masses have higher average particle number concentrations (N=720 cm -3 ), aerosol optical depth (AOD = 0.27), and scattering and absorption coefficients (σ s = 30 Mm -1 , σ a = 0.46 Mm -1 ) than clean air masses (N = 460 cm -3 , AOD= 0.08, σ s = 11 Mm -1 , σ a = 0.37 Mm -1 . Results presented will also show how changes in aerosol optical properties in the presence and absence of African dust relate to the physical and chemical composition of the particles.