第七届青年地学论坛

Primary brown carbon (BrC) co-emitted with black carbon (BC) from biomass burning is an important light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosol. BC from the Indo-Gangetic Plain can reach the Himalaya and influence glacial melting and climatic change. However, to date there is still not sufficient direct evidence for primary BrC in the Himalayan atmosphere. Here, we detected light-absorbing tarballs at microscopic scale collected on the northern slope of the Himalaya. We found that about 28% of thousands of individual particles were tarballs. The median sizes of externally mixed tarballs and internally mixed tarballs were 213 nm and 348 nm, respectively. Air mass trajectories, satellite detection, and Weather Research and Forecasting‐Chemistry (WRF-Chem) model simulations all indicated that these tarballs were emitted from biomass burning in the Indo-Gangetic Plain. A climate model simulation shows a significant heating effect (+0.01-4.06 W/m²) of the tarballs in the Himalayan atmosphere. We conclude that the tarballs from long-range transport can be an important factor in the climatic effect and would correspond to a substantial influence on glacial melting in the Himalaya.

brown carbon,tarball,Himalayan,individual particle,biomass burning