Source apportionment and regional transport of anthropogenic secondary organic aerosol during winter pollution periods in the Yangtze River Delta, China.

Since the concentrations of primary particles and secondary inorganic aerosol components have been reduced significantly due to stringent emission controls, quantifying the source contributions and regional transport of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) is critical to further improve air quality in eastern China. In this study, the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model coupled with the updated SAPRC-11 photochemical mechanism and a revised SOA module was applied to investigate the emission sector and regional contributions to SOA in winter 2015 (January 5-26, 2015) and 2016 (December 20, 2015-January 20, 2016) in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). The model is generally capable of reproducing the observed SOA concentrations at the Qingpu Supersite in Shanghai. The observed and predicted SOA concentrations are 6.4 µg/m3 and 6.9 µg/m3 in winter 2015, and 5.7 µg/m3 and 9.6 µg/m3 in winter 2016. The mean fraction bias (MFB) of the hourly SOA predictions is 0.22 and 0.32, respectively. High SOA concentrations in the wintertime of YRD are mainly due to aromatic compounds and dicarbonyls (glyoxal and methylglyoxal), which, on average, account for 43% and 53% of total SOA, respectively. The average contributions of industrial, residential, and transportation sectors in the YRD region during the entire simulation periods are 61%, 22%, and 17%, respectively. At the Qingpu Supersite in Shanghai, the industrial sector contributes to as much as 65% of total SOA in the heavy pollution episode of 2016. The contributions from transportation and residential sectors are 16% and 17%, respectively, during the same episode. The industry emissions from the Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai are major contributors to the SOA at the Qingpu supersite during the heavy-polluted episodes, accounting for 31%, 19%, and 14% of the total predicted SOA. This study represents the first detailed regional modeling study of source region contributions to SOA in the YRD region and the detailed analyses of SOA in two winters months complement the previous SOA source apportionment studies focusing on seasonal average contributions.