The NPS/CIRA Final BRAVO Report: Big Bend Regional Aerosol and Visibility Observational (BRAVO) Study Results
Schichtel BA, Gebhart KA, Barna MG, Malm WC, Day DE, Kreidenweis S, Collett J. The NPS/CIRA Final BRAVO Report: Big Bend Regional Aerosol and Visibility Observational (BRAVO) Study Results. IMPROVE
The National Park Service (NPS) and Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) conducted a number of analyses to understand the physical and optical properties of haze and the contributions of source regions to Big Bend's sulfate and haze. The source apportionment studies incorporated airmass history analyses, receptor modeling and Eulerian source oriented modeling. All source apportionment techniques and models were evaluated and validated against measured data, perfluorocarbon tracer data, and synthetic data generated from models. In addition, an extensive reconciliation of source attribution results was conducted. The reconciliation involved identifying biases in all techniques and developing a hybrid source attribution technique merging air quality data and modeling results to minimize these biases. NPS and CIRA believe these are the best available source attribution results and accurately reflect the contributions of different source regions in the United States and Mexico to Big Bend's particulate sulfate and haze during the BRAVO study period. The implications of these results are also discussed in the report.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Schichtel, Bret; Gebhart, Kristi; Barna, Michael; Malm, William; Day, Derek; Kreidenweis, Sonia; Collett, Jeffrey
- Publisher
- IMPROVE
- Units
- ARD
- Keywords
- Aerosol, Air Quality, AIRBIB, airmass history, airmass transport, BRAVO