Comparison between dust and haze aerosol properties of the 2015 Spring in Beijing using ground-based sun photometer and lidar

Because of the special geographical location and meteorology conditions, Beijing is a dust-prone city for a long history especially in the spring season. But these years, the most common air pollution in Beijing is haze which is mainly composed of fine particles. The dust is transported from north (Inner Mongolia province and Mongolia country), and the haze is transported from south (Hebei, Shandong and other provinces). Generally, the severities of dust and haze are opposite for the different weather causes. On March 28, 2015, the spring coming earlier for the relatively high temperature, a severe dust weather process happened suddenly in the long-term hazy days. In this dust process, the PM10 concentration was more than 1000μg/m3; the visibility was no more than 3km; and the aerosol optical depth was more than 2, which reached a severe pollution level. We used ground-based remote sensing instruments to observing the heavy dust episode. The data of two conditions were analyzed optical and microphysical parameters contrastively including the Aerosol Optical Depth, Single Scattering Albedo, Size distribution, Complex refractive index, Fine-mode Fraction. The vertical distribution characteristics were also analyzed by the lidar measurements. The results show that big differences between the dust and haze aerosol properties. But we found that fine mode particle pollution was assignable in the dust pollution weather in 2015 spring in Beijing. Our preliminary inference is that this dust episode was not only caused by transportation, but also contributed by the local raise dust.