Characteristics and source apportionment of winter black carbon aerosols in two Chinese megacities of Xi’an and Hong Kong

Abstract

Black carbon (BC) aerosols were observed over Xi'an (XA) and Hong Kong (HK) to better compare its properties and sources in two geographically separate regions in China. High-BC (7.9 ± 3.3 μg·m⁻³) and -PM_2.5 (182 ± 80.5 μg·m⁻³) concentrations were observed in XA, and these were much higher than those in HK (BC, 3.2 ± 0.9 μg·m⁻³; PM_2.5, 34.5 ± 9.3 μg·m⁻³). The contribution of BC to PM_2.5 in HK reached 10.7%, which was ~ 1.5 times than that in XA (7.6%). The results emphasized that BC played an important role in HK PM_2.5. The diurnal distribution of HK BC was highly correlated with vehicle emissions during the daytime; it peaked during heavy traffic times. Whereas XA BC exhibited flat distribution owing to stable BC sources. It is not markedly driven by traffic patterns. Additionally, the potential source contribution function (PSCF) analysis showed that XA BC mainly originated from local emissions while nearly half of the HK BC originated from distant sources, such as industrial emissions from northeastern regions and ship emissions from marine regions. These anthropogenic BC sources were found to be regional in nature based on multilinear engine (ME-2) analysis. Specifically, the XA BC sources were dominated by three factors: 22.5% from coal burning, 19.6% from biomass burning, and 32.9% from vehicle emissions. In HK, the majority of BC contributions originated from vehicle and ship emissions (78.9%), while only 14.5% and 1.5% originated from coal and biomass burning from residential combustion, as well as industrial and power plants in inland China.