Biogenic Sources Still Dominate Organic Carbon Aerosol in Europe

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.

Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres

Natural and anthropogenic atmospheric particles interact with solar radiation, playing a key role in climate change, thus it’s important to have a solid understanding of past changes in the composition and concentrations of these particles in the atmosphere.

Organic carbon (OC) is a major constituent of present‐day aerosols but its sources remain far less understood than other aerosols like sulfate. Legrand et al. [2024] investigate OC and its radiocarbon (¹⁴C) signature in an ice core extracted in the Caucasus to reconstruct and discuss past OC changes in southeastern Europe.

The authors found that, despite growing emissions from fossil fuel combustion, vegetation emissions of organic compounds still dominate as the primary source of OC particles in summer in southeastern Europe. A quite large temporal variability of OC is observed and attributed to variations of vegetation emissions in response to past fluctuations of summer temperature in this region. The authors also found that, after 1960, fossil fuel emissions in winter became almost as large as biogenic emissions that included wood burning during that season. 

Citation: Legrand, M., Preunkert, S., Kutuzov, S., Siour, G., Mikhalenko, V., Dolgova, E., & Friedrich, R. (2024). 20th Century changes of DOC and its 14C signature archived in Caucasus ice-core: Implications for past sources of organic carbon aerosol in south-eastern Europe. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129, e2023JD040121. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JD040121

—Abdelwahid Mellouki, Editor, JGR: Atmospheres

Text © 2024. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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