Effect of typhoon on atmospheric aerosol particle pollutants accumulation over Xiamen, China

• Aerosol properties during typhoon process were observed in high resolution over Xiamen.
• Two pollutant groups were observed during the whole typhoon periods.
• Seven types of particle clusters were obtained during the observation.
• Ship emissions and stagnant atmosphere dominated the formation of first pollutant group.
• Second pollutant caused by the combined effect of local emissions and long-term transports.

Great influence of typhoon on air quality has been confirmed, however, rare data especially high time resolved aerosol particle data could be used to establish the behavior of typhoon on air pollution. A single particle aerosol spectrometer (SPAMS) was employed to characterize the particles with particle number count in high time resolution for two typhoons of Soulik (2013) and Soudelor (2015) with similar tracks. Three periods with five events were classified during the whole observation time, including pre – typhoon (event 1 and event 2), typhoon (event 3 and event 4) and post – typhoon (event 5) based on the meteorological parameters and particle pollutant properties. First pollutant group appeared during pre-typhoon (event 2) with high relative contributions of V – Ni rich particles. Pollution from the ship emissions and accumulated by local processes with stagnant meteorological atmosphere dominated the formation of the pollutant group before typhoon. The second pollutant group was present during typhoon (event 3), while typhoon began to change the local wind direction and increase wind speed. Particle number count reached up to the maximum value. High relative contributions of V – Ni rich and dust particles with low value of NO3−/SO42− was observed during this period, indicating that the pollutant group was governed by the combined effect of local pollutant emissions and long-term transports. The analysis of this study sheds a deep insight into understand the relationship between the air pollution and typhoon.