Tracing the biomass burning emissions over the Arabian Sea in winter season: Implications from the molecular distributions and relative abundances of sugar compounds

Abstract

The widespread haze pollution over South Asia typically occurs in winter, affecting the abundance of organic aerosols (OA) over the Arabian Sea due to prevailing meteorology.We determined the concentrations of biomass burning (BB) derived anhydrosugars (levoglucosan: Lev, galactosan: Gal, and mannosan: Man), sugars (glucose, fructose, sucrose, and trehalose) and sugar alcohols (arabitol, mannitol, erythritol, and inositol) over the Arabian Sea during a winter cruise (6-24 December 2018).Molecular distributions revealed predominance of levoglucosan or sucrose.Besides, levoglucosan strongly correlated with mannosan, galactosan, sugar alcohols and elemental carbon, emphasizing their BB-origin.Backward air mass trajectories intercepted by the satellite-based fire counts over the Indo-Gangetic Plain together with relationship between stable carbon isotopic composition of TC (?13CTC) and levoglucosan-C to organic carbon (%), confirmed the impact of BB-derived OA.A comparison of Lev/Man (av.16.2) and Lev/K+ (av.0.27) ratios over the Arabian Sea with the source-emissions revealed their origin from crop-residue burning.Rather high concentrations of Lev over the Arabian Sea compared to those documented over the Bay of Bengal, East China Sea, Sea of Japan and the western North Pacific further suggests a stronger impact of BB in the continental outflow over this marine basin.Besides, Lev/K+ ratios in marine aerosols exponentially decreased with an apparent increase in ambient relative humidity and temperature over the Arabian Sea during the South Asian outflow, implying a photochemical oxidation of BBOA.Such field-based relationship of Lev with the meteorological parameters can be useful for modelling the impact of BBOA on the surface Ocean.Besides, the aeolian input of sugar-C and water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) accounted for 83 % and 92 % of that riverine supply to the Arabian Sea, respectively.This means atmospheric dry-deposition of sugars is an important external source of dissolved organic compounds to the surface water.