The BIOARC project will use existing measurement facilities on the NERC FAAM BAe-146 aircraft together with surface measurements to deliver vertical and horizontal concentration profiles of Primary Biological aerosols (PBA), or bioaerosols, over UK regions including urban, rural-cropland, grassland, forest & coastal. It will use aircraft bioaerosol sampling methodologies recently developed in the US together with real-time bioaerosol instruments. These data will provide the first such information on UK boundary layer concentration profiles of bioaerosol for over 50 years. High quality UK airborne data sets suitable for constraining & testing UK bio-emissions models for the first time.
Our new vertically & horizontally resolved PBA-climate database will support a raft of scientific research and policy applications well beyond the timescale of the project. In situ PBA concentrations will be correlated with airborne meteorological, trace gas and other aerosol composition data, for air mass classification, using tools developed for the FAAM aircraft over many years for source tracking & identification. This will allow us to deliver quality controlled, assimilation-ready case studies able to constrain a wide range of potential PBA emissions models.
BIOARC also conduct laboratory experiments to deliver UK specific bioaerosol reference data sets designed to improve interpretation of current and future PBA field data collected using real-time UVLIF bioaerosol instruments.

Grant Ref: NE/S002049/1