News from ECAC and the DC

World Calibration Centre for Aerosol Physics (WCCAP)

The WCCAP was founded in 2002 to serve as a competence center for in-situ physical and optical aerosol measurements as part of the world-wide GAW-program of the WMO. This WCCAP is world-wide unique for the quality assurance of physical and optical in-situ aerosol measurements and station audits to improve infrastructures.

European Reference Laboratory for Air Pollution (ERLAP)

ERLAP was founded in 1994 to serve as a calibration facility for measurements of particulate matter and gaseous air pollutants in Europe. Inter-laboratory comparisons have been organized yearly or more for 2 decades. As a service of the European Commission, ERLAP provides support independently of national and private interests, which makes it unique in Europe.

Aerosol Chemical Monitor Calibration Center (ACMCC)

The ACMCC is managed by a consortium of French laboratories, including CNRS (LSCE and LaMP) and INERIS, and is mainly based at LSCE, located south of the Paris region. As part of the quality control procedures, the ACMCC provides a large set of independent co-located on-line/off-line aerosol measurements for chemical, physical and optical parameters. It offers innovation opportunities through the exchange of information between manufacturers and users, the optimization of technological solutions, and the evaluation of new online aerosol chemical analyzers.

Prague Aerosol Calibration Centre (PACC)

The PACC was founded in 2020 as part of ACTRIS Topical Centre for Aerosol In-Situ observations (CAIS/ECAC). It serves for calibration and quality assurance of physical in-situ aerosol measurements and station audits for ACTRIS and for external users. (operational 2021)

Cluster Calibration Center (CCC)

CCC was founded in 2018 to serve as a calibration facility for sub 10 nm aerosol, cluster and ion measurements. It provides instrument-specific calibration services and training. (operational 2021)

Organic Tracers and Aerosol Constituents Calibration Center (OGTAC-CC)

The Atmospheric Chemistry Department of TROPOS hosts the Organic Tracers and Aerosol Constituents - Calibration Centre (OGTAC-CC), which is the first calibration center for these class of compounds worldwide, providing a strong benefit to the aerosol community, as it harmonizes approaches for the chemical analysis of organic particulate constituents.

Elemental Mass Calibration Centre (EMC2)

The EMC2 unit will be hosted in the INFN LABEC laboratory which is devoted to the analysis of the elemental composition of aerosols, environmental samples and cultural heritage by means of analytical nuclear techniques, such as ion beam analysis, besides other field of applications, for instance material science and forensics, and radiocarbon dating with accelerator mass spectrometry. The LABEC laboratory was born in 2003 with the installation of a 3 MV Tandetron particle accelerator and stems from more than thirty years of experience of the research group members with accelerator-related analytical techniques.

News from ECAC and the DC

Published by ECAC in Information · Friday 30 Apr 2021 · 2:00

Dear friends from the aerosol in-situ community,

Here come a few announcements on the behalf of ECAC and the DC In Situ:

1. We are sorry about the confusion. However, due to organizational reasons, we have to postpone the aerosol in-situ community workshop for data QC and data submission, which was previously scheduled for May 4, 2021.

2. The new workshop date is Wednesday May 19 from 09.00 – 12.00 CEST. You will receive a separate Outlook invitation for this meeting, including the detailed agenda. The short agenda will be discussions about:

a) microphysical measurements (CPC, MPSS, CCNC)

b) optical measurements (AP, int. Nephelometer)

c) chemical measurements (OC/EC, ACSM)

d) other technical questions.

3. The ACTRIS In Situ Data Centre unit will offer an intensive support period for your questions around data reporting. Between 17 – 21 May 2021, we will have increased focus on responding to your questions (via ebas@nilu.no) as fast as possible.

4. Our DC In Situ colleagues Ann Mari and Yong will give lectures on the data reporting process at the Hyytiälä winter school next week. The lectures will be turned into videos. These videos will be made available as educational material for your help (by separate mail once available).

5. We plan monthly aerosol in-situ community workshops from now on (2 hours). The meeting on May 19 will the first one of the coming up series.

6. All meetings will be announced in future on the official ACTRIS and the ECAC websites

7. The topic of the next follow-up aerosol in-situ community workshops will be about the revised version of the “preliminary recommendations”, which will be released latest in June 2021.

8. ECAC und the DC created a new email list of the ACTRIS aerosol in-situ community hosted by the data center (this email was sent by this email list)

9. We are sure that this email list in not complete yet, since we don’t know all interested people, especially from the new coming up National Facilities. We would like ask, if you could possible inform also your colleagues about this list. If they want to be added, they should write an email to Markus Fiebig (mf@nilu.no).

Best wishes and a good weekend

Alfred Wiedensohler & Markus Fiebig

Agenda