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URBAN BACKGROUND SITE – BARCELONA

The Barcelona urban background monitoring site (BCN) is located northwest of Barcelona, a coastal city, densely populated, with intense road traffic, harbour and airport emissions. This leads to NO2 concentrations often exceeding EU limit values, in addition to PM10, PM2.5 and NO2 concentrations frequently above WHO guidelines.

The site consists of three air-conditioned shelters for aerosol in-situ and trace gas monitoring, located in the private gardens of the IDAEA facilities (41° 23'14.28"N, 2°6'56.34"E, 77 meters asl). In each container there is an array of PMx inlets. The IDAEA site is equipped with instruments for measuring physical, optical and chemical properties of aerosols (see table). State-of-the-art instruments such as Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor (Q-ACSM) and ToF-PTRMS are operative since 2018 and 2021, respectively. The ACSM provides real-time measurements (30 minute averages) of the chemical composition and mass concentrations of non-refractory species in submicron aerosol particles. The ToF-PTRMS 4000 Ionicon provides continuous measurement of VOCs.

Moreover, instruments for aerosol remote sensing are located at UPC CommSensLab, (41°23'20.8"N 2°06'42.2"E, 115 meters asl) 200 m from the IDAEA facilities.