DOE OSTI2026
The Fluorescent Particle Vertical Profiles at CoURAGE (FPVPC) campaign was designed to characterize the vertical distribution of bioaerosol-relevant particles at the urban-rural interface sampled during the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) User Facility’s Coast-Urban-Rural Atmospheric Gradient Experiment (CoURAGE). Bioaerosols, including bacteria, fungi, viruses, pollen, spores, and biological fragments, can affect cloud formation, disease transmission, allergen exposure, and biogeochemical cycling. Although ground-level bioaerosol abundance and composition have been studied extensively, their vertical distributions remain poorly constrained across different ecosystems, source regions, and meteorological regimes. The CoURAGE deployment addresses this gap by pairing ARM tethered balloon system (TBS)vertical profiling with in situ single-particle fluorescence measurements and offline single-particle chemical analysis.
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗