Observations of particulates within the North Atlantic Flight Corridor: POLINAT 2, September-October 1997

This paper discusses particulate concentration and size distribution data g athered using the University of Missouri-Rolla Mobile Aerosol Sampling Syst em (UMR-MASS), and used to investigate the southern extent of the eastern e nd of the North Atlantic Flight Corridor (NAFC) during project Pollution Fr om Aircraft Emissions in the North Atlantic Flight Corridor/Subsonic Assess ment (SASS) Ozone and Nitrogen Oxide Experiment (POLINAT 2/SONEX) from Sept ember 19 to October 23, 1997. The analysis presented in this paper focuses on "the corridor effect," or enhancement of pollutants by jet aircraft comb ustion events. To investigate the phenomena, both vertical and horizontal p rofiles of the corridor, and regions immediately adjacent to the corridor, were performed. The profiles showed a time-dependent enhancement of particu lates within the corridor, and a nonvolatile (with respect to thermal volat ilization at 300 degrees C) aerosol enhancement at corridor altitudes by a factor of 3.6. The southern extent of the North Atlantic Flight Corridor wa s established from a four flight average of the particulate data and yielde d a boundary near 42.5 degrees N during the study period. A size distributi on analysis of the nonvolatile particulates revealed an enhancement in the <40 nm particulates for size distributions recorded within the flight corri dor.