Begoña Artíñano

• Ph D Atmospheric Physics
• Head of Department at Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas

Carbonaceous aerosols (CA), composed of black carbon (BC) and organic matter (OM), significantly impact the climate. Light absorption properties of CA, particularly of BC and brown carbon (BrC), are crucial due to their contribution to global and regional warming. We present the absorption properties of BC (bAbs,BC) and BrC (bAbs,BrC) inferred usin...

Atmospheric aerosols are one of the main factors that contribute to poor air quality. These aerosols are mostly concentrated within the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) and mixing layer (ML). The ABL extends from ground level to the lowest level of the troposphere directly affected by surface temperature, solar irradiance, the orography and its pro...

Air pollution is one of the greatest environmental risks to health, causing millions of deaths and deleterious health effects worldwide, especially in urban areas where citizens are exposed to high ambient levels of pollutants, also influencing indoor air quality (IAQ). Many sources of indoor air are fairly obvious and well known, but the contribut...

This study aims to picture the phenomenology of urban ambient total lung deposited surface area (LDSA) (including head/throat (HA), tracheobronchial (TB), and alveolar (ALV) regions) based on multiple path particle dosimetry (MPPD) model during 2017-2019 period collected from urban background (UB, n = 15), traffic (TR, n = 6), suburban background (...

This study analyzed the variability of equivalent black carbon (eBC) mass concentrations and their sources in urban Europe to provide insights into the use of eBC as an advanced air quality (AQ) parameter for AQ standards. This study compiled eBC mass concentration datasets covering the period between 2006 to 2022 from 50 measurement stations, incl...

This work presents a thorough analysis of PM10 speciated organic composition at Sanabria Lake Natural Park, a rural remote area in NW-Spain, including diacids, hydroxy and poliacids, fatty acids, alkenoic acids, sugars, sugar alcohols, n-alkanes, PAHs, quinones, hopanes, tracers of biomass burning, and biogenic secondary organic aerosol (BSOA) from...

Road traffic is the main contributor to NO2 emissions in many European cities, causing that the current limit values for the protection of human health are exceeded. The use of photocatalytic compounds that incorporate titanium dioxide (TiO2) is frequently proposed as abatement technology but its depolluting effectiveness on a real scale is still b...

An intense and long-lasting Saharan dust outbreak crossed the Iberian Peninsula (IP) from the southwest (SW) to the northeast (NE) from 25 March until 7 April 2021. This work aims to assess the optical and mass contribution of both fine and coarse dust particles along their transport. Five Iberian lidar stations were monitoring the transport and ev...

A field campaign has been performed in the Madrid region to study the VOC influence in the growth of new particles in ambient air. A number of instruments have been deployed to characterize the main pollutant gases and particle properties and composition. The measurements were performed simultaneously at three sites (rural, urban background and urb...

Aerosols affect air quality, weather and climate through many mechanisms and are dangerous to human health. They are mostly concentrated within the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) its height is affected by the radiation emitted by the surface, causing turbulence and evolving along the day, influencing the vertical mixing of the air pollutants gene...

An intense and long-lasting Saharan dust outbreak over the Iberian Peninsula (IP) in springtime 2021 is studied in this work with the aim of investigating the optical and mass contribution of both the fine and coarse dust particles along their transport by crossing the IP from the south-west to the north-east. Five Iberian lidar stations (El Arenos...

In this study, global reanalysis dataset fields of meteorological parameters (temperature and geopotential height at different atmospheric levels) in the period 1948–2020, were used to characterize the main dynamic and thermodynamic features of African dust outbreaks (ADO) produced over regions of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands. The...

There are important questions surrounding the potential contribution of outdoor and indoor air quality in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and perpetuation of COVID-19 epidemic waves. Environmental health may be a critical component of COVID-19 prevention. The public health community and health agencies should consider the evolving evidence in their...

Aerosol particles are a complex component of the atmospheric system which influence climate directly by interacting with solar radiation, and indirectly by contributing to cloud formation. The variety of their sources, as well as the multiple transformations they may undergo during their transport (including wet and dry deposition), result in signi...

The adverse effects of fine particulate matter and many volatile organic substances on human health are well known. Fine particles are, in fact, those most capable of penetrating in depth into the respiratory system. People spend most of their time indoors where concentrations of some pollutants are sometimes higher than outdoors. Therefore, there...

Background Previous studies described the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in outdoor air particulate matter (PM) in urban areas of northern Italy and USA. The city of Madrid was heavily affected by COVID-19 during March-June 2020. Also, this city usually displays high concentrations of PM under several atmospheric situations. This is mandatory to assess the...

In this work, the effect of the aerosol vertical distribution on the local shortwave aerosol radiative forcing is studied. We computed the radiative forcing at the top and bottom of the atmosphere between 0.2 and 4 microns using the libRadTran package and compared the results with those provided by AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork). Lidar measureme...

A circulation classification technique based on daily sea level pressure fields was applied to classify homogeneous synoptic types in the period 2001–2019 for the Iberian Peninsula (IP). The main synoptic meteorological patterns (SMP) were thus discriminated and then validated by the analysis of meteorological variables and atmospheric stability pa...

Aerosol particles are a complex component of the atmospheric system that influences climate directly by interacting with solar radiation, and indirectly by contributing to cloud formation. The variety of their sources, as well as the multiple transformations they may undergo during their transport, result in significant spatial and temporal variabi...

In this paper, we study the effect of the vertical distribution of aerosols on the inversion process to obtain microphysical properties of aerosols. The GRASP code is used to retrieve the aerosol size distribution from two different schemes. Firstly, only sun/sky photometer measurements of aerosol optical depth and sky radiances are used as input t...

In this study, the feasibility of using ceilometer signals to retrieve radiative forcing values is evaluated. The Global Atmospheric Model (GAME) radiative transfer model is used to estimate the shortwave and longwave radiative forcing using an aerosol parameterization based on AERONET data and vertical profiles from a Lufft CHM-15k Nimbus ceilomet...

The occurrence of local high-pollution episodes in densely populated urban areas, which have huge fleets of vehicles, is currently one of the most worrying problems associated with air pollution worldwide. Such episodes are produced under specific meteorological conditions, which favour the sudden increase of levels of air pollutants. This study ha...

Aerosol particles are essential constituents of the Earth's atmosphere, impacting the earth radiation balance directly by scattering and absorbing solar radiation, and indirectly by acting as cloud condensation nuclei. In contrast to most greenhouse gases, aerosol particles have short atmospheric residence times, resulting in a highly heterogeneous...

Biomass burning is a major air pollution problem all around the world. However, the identification and quantification of its contribution to ambient aerosol levels is a difficult task due to the generalized lack of observations of molecular markers. This paper presents the results of a yearlong study of organic constituents of the atmospheric aeros...

Abstract. Aerosol particles are essential constituents of the Earth’s atmosphere, impacting the earth radiation balance directly by scattering and absorbing solar radiation, and indirectly by acting as cloud condensation nuclei. In contrast to most greenhouse gases, aerosol particles have short atmospheric residence time resulting in a highly heter...

This study has assessed the influence of the origin of air mass on levels of particulate matter (PM10) and chemical composition (SO42− and NO3−) in the air basin of Madrid. A data set of back-trajectories of air mass arriving to this area of study from 15 June 15 2009 to 8 July 2011 has been analyzed. Firstly, the cluster analysis statistical metho...

Urban air pollution is one of the most important environmental problems nowadays. Understanding urban pollution is rather challenging due to different factors that produce a strongly heterogeneous pollutant distribution within streets. Observed concentrations depend on processes occurring at a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, complex wind...

An unprecedented extreme Saharan dust event was registered in winter time from 20 to 23 February 2017 over the Iberian Peninsula (IP). We report on aerosol optical properties observed under this extreme dust intrusion through passive and active remote sensing techniques. For that, AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) and EARLINET (European Aerosol Res...

SCALA© (Sampling Campaigns for Aerosols in the Low Atmosphere) is a web-based software system that was developed in a multidisciplinary manner to integrally support the documentation and the management and analysis of atmospheric aerosol data from sampling campaigns. The software development process applied considered the prototyping and the evolut...

This work presents a comprehensive study of the size-resolved particle hygroscopicity measurements in a suburban ambient in Southern Europe (Madrid). Measurements were obtained by an H-TDMA instrument during a 16-month period for the size particles of 50, 80, 110, 190 and 265 nm. The annual, seasonal and daily patterns were investigated with the ai...

This work describes results obtained from the 2016 Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (ACSM) intercomparison exercise performed at the Aerosol Chemical Monitor Calibration Centre (ACMCC, France). Fifteen quadrupole ACSMs (Q_ACSM) from the European Research Infrastructure for the observation of Aerosols, Clouds and Trace gases (ACTRIS) network were...

The occurrence of African dust outbreaks over specific areas of the Mediterranean basin has been associated with increases in the PM 10 concentration levels and also in the mortality rates. Different hypothesis have been proposed in the last years to explain the processes by which African dust storms generates negative health effect over urban area...

Air pollution dynamics over the Iberian peninsula, European Commission Project MECAPIP Air Pollution Research Report 44

PM10 aerosol was sampled in Santiago, the largest island of Cabo Verde, for 1 year, and analysed for elements, ions and carbonaceous material. Very high levels of dust were measured during the winter months, as a result of the direct transport of dust plumes from the African continent. Ionic and mass balances (IMBs) were applied to the analysed com...

Complex spatial and temporal patterns of ground-level O 3 and NO 2 concentrations have been revealed across an important southern European O 3 exceedance area (Madrid Basin, central Spain). Data were obtained from 102 diffusion tube sites and 49 monitoring stations (25 urban/suburban, 12 urban/suburban-traffic, 7 remote, 3 rural, 2 urban-industrial...

This paper presents the light-scattering properties of atmospheric aerosol particles measured over the past decade at 28 ACTRIS observatories, which are located mainly in Europe. The data include particle light scattering (σsp) and hemispheric backscattering (σbsp) coefficients, scattering Ångström exponent (SAE), backscatter fraction (BF) and asym...

Ammonia emissions play an important role in the formation of secondary inorganic aerosols. Road traffic is considered to be one of the main sources of ammonia in urban environments, although other sources have been identified. An experimental study was carried out in a suburban area of Madrid (Spain), in which high time resolution measurements of a...

This study synthesizes for the first time results from simultaneous aerosol measurements performed at seven diverse locations distributed all over the Spanish geography. The observations were carried out during two field campaigns in 2012–2013, one-month each and during different seasons. These field campaigns were performed in the framework of the...

As a result of the EC HEREPLUS project the O3 short-term mortality in Madrid (Spain) are showed.

This study focuses on the analysis of aerosol hygroscopic growth during the Sierra Nevada Lidar AerOsol Profiling Experiment (SLOPE I) campaign by using the synergy of active and passive remote sensors at the ACTRIS Granada station and in situ instrumentation at a mountain station (Sierra Nevada, SNS). To this end, a methodology based on simultaneo...

Various studies have reported that the photochemical nucleation of new ultrafine particles (UFPs) in urban environments within high insolation regions occurs simultaneously with high ground ozone (O3) levels. In this work, we evaluate the atmospheric dynamics leading to summer O3 episodes in the Madrid air basin (central Iberia) by means of measuri...

An unprecedented extreme Saharan dust event was registered in winter time from 20 to 23 February 2017 over the Iberian Peninsula (IP). We report on aerosol optical properties observed under this extreme dust outbreak through remote sensing (active and passive) techniques. For that, EARLINET (European Aerosol Research LIdar NETwork) lidar and AERONE...

PM10 aerosol was sampled in Santiago, the largest island of Cape Verde, for one year and analysed for elements, ions and carbonaceous material. Very high levels of dust were measured during the winter months, as a result of the direct transport of dust plumes from the African continent. Ionic and Mass Balances (IMB) were applied to the analysed com...

Exceedances of NO2hourly limit value (200 μg·m-3) imply the need to implement short term action plans to avoid adverse effects on human health in urban areas. The Madrid City Council applied the stage 3 of the NO2protocol during a high-pollution episode under stable meteorological conditions on December 2016 for the first time. This included road t...

PBDE affinity for particulate matter increases with congener bromination degree. • DP levels obtained in TSP were higher than those in the gas phase (PUF). • Active and passive samplers derived similar PBDE and DP concentrations. • Hazard quotients for PBDEs and DP reflect low cancer risk through inhalation. • PBDEs were the FR with the highest lev...

En este trabajo se presenta un estudio de la influencia de las condiciones sinópticas y de la altura de la capa de mezcla sobre las condiciones de la calidad del aire en la ciudad de Madrid, analizando un episodio de alta concentracioon de NO2 que tuvo lugar del 26 al 30 de diciembre de 2016.

This work focuses on the study of aerosol hygroscopic growth during Sierra Nevada Lidar AerOsol Profiling Experiment (SLOPE I) campaign by using the synergy of active and passive remote sensors at Granada valley station (IISTA-CEAMA station) and in-situ instrumentation at a mountain station (Sierra Nevada station, SNS), located ~ 20 km away from II...

Urban ambient air samples, including gas-phase (PUF), total suspended particulates (TSP), PM10, PM2.5 and PM1 airborne particle fractions were collected to evaluate gas-particle partitioning and size particle distribution of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Clausius-Clapeyron equati...

Various studies have reported that photochemical nucleation of new ultrafine particles (UFP) in urban environments within high insolation regions occurs simultaneously with high ozone (O3). In this work, we evaluate the atmospheric dynamics leading to summer O3 episodes in the Madrid Air Basin (Central Iberia) by means of measuring a 3D distributio...

In this work, a study of several observations of aerosol water uptake in a real (non-controlled) atmosphere, registered by remote sensing techniques, are presented. In particular, three events were identified within the Atmospheric Boundary Layer (ABL) and other two events were detected in the free troposphere (beyond the top of the ABL). Then, aer...

This paper presents the light scattering properties of atmospheric aerosol particles measured over the past decade at 28 ACTRIS observatories, located mainly in Europe. The data include particle light scattering (σsp) and hemispheric backscattering (σbsp) coefficients, scattering Ångström exponent (SAE), backscatter fraction (BF) and asymmetry para...

The inorganic and organic geochemistry of aerosol particulate matter (APM) was studied in a major olive grove area from Southwest Europe (Baena, Spain). The biomass consists of olive tree branches and the solid waste resulting of the olive oil production. Moreover, high PM10 levels were obtained (31.5 μg m− 3), with two days of exceedance of the da...

A one-year black carbon (BC) experimental study was performed at three different locations (urban traffic, urban background, rural) in Spain with different equivalent BC (eBC) source characteristics by means of multi-wavelength Aethalometers. The Aethalometer model was used for the source apportionment study, based on the difference in absorption s...

Nucleation and new particle formation (NPF) events can make a significant contribution to particle number concentrations in remote locations (Kulmala and Kerminen, 2008) as well as urban locations (e.g. Brines et. al., 2015). While the remote NPF events have been subject to observations for years and are quite well understood, urban NPF still needs...

Aerosol measurements at two AERONET (AErosol RObotic NETwork) sites of the Iberian Peninsula: Madrid (40°.45N, 3.72W) and La Coruña (43°.36N, 8°.42W) have been analyzed for the period 2012–2015 to assess aerosol optical properties (intensive and extensive) throughout the atmospheric column and their radiative forcing (RF) and radiative forcing effi...

A high number of aerosol particle shrinkage cases (70) have been identified and analyzed from an extensive and representative database of aerosol size distributions obtained between 2009 and 2015 at an urban background site in Madrid (Spain). A descriptive classification based on the process from which the shrinkage began is proposed according whic...

Atmospheric oxidants such as ozone (O3), hydroxyl and nitrate radicals (OH and NO3) determine the ability of the urban atmosphere to process organic and inorganic pollutants, which have an impact on air quality, environmental health and climate. Madrid city has experienced an increase of 30–40% in ambient air O3 levels, along with a decrease of 20–...

A large and uncontrolled fire of a tire landfill started in Sese?a (Toledo, Spain) on May 13, 2016. An experimental deployment was immediately launched in the area for measuring regulated and non-standard air quality parameters to assess the potential impact of the plume at local and regional levels. Outdoor and indoor measurements of different par...

Poor urban air quality is one of the main environmental concerns worldwide due to its implications for population exposure and health-related issues. However, the development of effective abatement strategies in cities requires a consistent and holistic assessment of air pollution processes, taking into account all the relevant scales within a city...

The observation of high aerosol hygroscopic growth in Madrid is mainly limited to specific atmospheric conditions, such as local stagnation episodes, which take place in winter time. One of these episodes was identified in December 2014 and the hygroscopic growth factor (GF) measurements obtained in such episode were analysed in order to know the i...

The present work is a first approach to the study of the spatio-temporal variability of the submicrometer atmospheric aerosol in Spain. The aerosol measurements have been obtained simultaneously at seven monitoring stations that compose the REDMAAS network during two measurement campaigns corresponding to summer and winter seasons. In both summer a...

As part of the European ACTRIS project, the first large Quadrupole Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (Q-ACSM) intercomparison study was conducted in the region of Paris for 3 weeks during the late-fall – early-winter period (November–December 2013). The first week was dedicated to the tuning and calibration of each instrument, whereas the second...

This work presents for the first time a classification of shrinkage events based on the aerosol processes that precede them. To this end, 3.5 years of continuous measurements (from 2009 to 2012) of aerosol size distributions, obtained with a Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer (SMPS) at an urban background site in Southern Europe, have been interprete...

This article presents a study of aerosol optical and microphysical properties under different relative humidity (RH) but well mixed layer conditions using optical and microphysical aerosol properties from multi-wavelength (MW) Raman lidar and in-situ aerosol observations collected at the Cabauw Experimental Site for Atmospheric Research (CESAR). Tw...

REDMAAS (Red Española de DMAs Ambientales), the Spanish network of environmental Differential Mobility Analyzers (DMAs), currently consists of six research groups involved in the measurement of atmospheric aerosol size distributions by means of DMAs. The aim of this network is to guarantee the good quality and comparability of the routine measureme...

As part of the European ACTRIS project, the first large Quadrupole Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (Q-ACSM) intercomparison study was conducted in the region of Paris for three weeks during the late fall–early winter period (November–December 2013). The first week was dedicated to tuning and calibration of each instrument whereas the second and...

Chemically resolved atmospheric aerosol data sets from the largest intercomparison of the Aerodyne aerosol chemical speciation monitors (ACSMs) performed to date were collected at the French atmospheric supersite SIRTA. In total 13 quadrupole ACSMs (Q-ACSM) from the European ACTRIS ACSM network, one time-of-flight ACSM (ToF-ACSM), and one high-reso...

The evolution of the mean levels of particulate matter (PM) and gaseous pollutants recorded in the Madrid metropolitan area from 1999 to 2012, were investigated focussing on the impact of mitigation strategies and economic scenarios. Temporal trends have shown that SO2, CO, NO, PM10 and NO2 levels at Madrid kerbside and urban-background sites have...

Road traffic emissions are often considered the main source of ultrafine particles (UFP, diameter smaller than 100 nm) in urban environments. However, recent studies worldwide have shown that – in high-insolation urban regions at least – new particle formation events can also contribute to UFP. In order to quantify such events we systematically stu...

Chemically resolved atmospheric aerosol data sets from the largest intercomparison of the Aerodyne aerosol chemical speciation monitors (ACSM) performed to date were collected at the French atmospheric supersite SIRTA. In total 13 quadrupole ACSMs (Q-ACSM) from the European ACTRIS ACSM network, one time-of-flight ACSM (ToF-ACSM), and one high-resol...

Few recent studies examined acute effects on health of individual chemical species in the particulate matter (PM) mixture, and most of them have been conducted in North America. Studies in Southern Europe are scarce. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between particulate matter constituents and daily hospital admissions and mortal...

Nano-sized heavy metal compounds and mineral dust are frequently found as part of the structures in larger anthro-pogenic particles from urban environments (Adachi and Buseck, 2010). The study of these particles has received special attention in recent studies due to harmful toxicological and environmental effects. For instance, the heavy metal par...

Road traffic emissions are often considered the main source of ultrafine particles (UFP, diameter smaller than 100 nm) in urban environments. However, recent studies have shown that – in southern European urban regions at least – new particle formation events can also contribute to UFP. In order to quantify such events we systematically studied fou...