Abstract. To mitigate climate change in China, a better understanding of optical properties of aerosol is required due to the complexity in emission sources. Here, an intensive real-time measurement was conducted in an urban area of China before and during the lockdown of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), to explore the impacts of anthropogenic activities on aerosol light extinction and direct radiative effect (DRE). The mean light extinction coefficient (bext) reduced from 774.7 ± 298.1 Mm−1 during the normal period to 544.3 ± 179.4 Mm−1 during the lockdown period. The generalized addictive model analysis indicated that the large decline of bext (29.7 %) was entirely attributed to the sharp reductions in anthropogenic emissions. Chemical calculation of bext based on the ridge regression analysis showed that organic aerosol (OA) was the largest contributor to bext in both periods (45.1–61.4 %), and contributions of two oxygenated OAs to bext increased by 3.0–14.6 % during the lockdown. A hybrid environmental receptor model combining with chemical and optical variables identified six sources of bext. It was found that bext from traffic-related emission, coal combustion, fugitive dust, nitrate plus secondary OA (SOA) source, and sulfate plus SOA source decreased by 21.4–97.9 % in the lockdown, whereas bext from biomass burning increased by 27.1 % mainly driven by undiminished needs of residential cooking and heating. The atmospheric radiative transfer model was further used to illustrate that biomass burning instead of traffic-related emission became the largest positive effect (10.0 ± 10.9 W m−2) on aerosol DRE in the atmosphere during the lockdown. Our study provides insights into aerosol bext and DRE from anthropogenic sources, and the results implied the importance of biomass burning for tackling climate change in China in the future.
Supplementary material to "Measurement report: The importance of biomass burning in light extinction and direct radiative effect of urban aerosol during the COVID-19 lockdown in China"
