Vertical characteristics of levels and potential sources of water-soluble ions in PM₁₀ in a Chinese megacity

To investigate the vertical characteristics of ions in PM10 as well as the contributions and possible locations of their sources, eight water-soluble ions were measured at four heights simultaneously along a meteorological tower in Tianjin, China. The total ion concentrations showed a general decreasing trend with increasing height, ranging from 64.94μgm(-3) at 10m to 44.56μgm(-3) at 220m. NH4(+), SO4(2-) and NO3(-) showed higher height-to-height correlations. In addition, relationships between ions are discussed using Pearson correlation coefficients and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA), which implied that, for each height, the correlations among NH4(+), SO4(2-) and NO3(-) were higher. Finally, sources were identified qualitatively by the ratio of certain ions and quantitatively by principal component analysis/multiple linear regression (PCA/MLR) and positive matrix factorisation (PMF). Secondary sources played a dominant role for PM10 and water-soluble ions at four heights and became more important at greater heights (the percentage contributions were 43.04-66.41% for four heights by PCA/MLR and 46.93-67.62% by PMF). Then, the redistributed concentration field (RCF) combined with PCA/MLR and PMF was applied, which indicated the high potential source regions. The vertical characteristics of the levels, relationships, source contributions and locations would support the effective management of the water-soluble ions in particulate matter.