Articles | Volume 16, issue 5
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-1311-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-16-1311-2023
Research article
 | 
13 Mar 2023
Research article |  | 13 Mar 2023

An evaluation of the U.S. EPA's correction equation for PurpleAir sensor data in smoke, dust, and wintertime urban pollution events

Daniel A. Jaffe, Colleen Miller​​​​​​​, Katie Thompson, Brandon Finley, Manna Nelson, James Ouimette, and Elisabeth Andrews

Download

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor | : Report abuse
  • RC1: 'Comment on amt-2022-265', Anonymous Referee #1, 26 Oct 2022
    • AC1: 'Reply on RC1 and RC2', D.A.J. Jaffe, 03 Dec 2022
  • RC2: 'Comment on amt-2022-265', Anonymous Referee #2, 05 Nov 2022
    • AC1: 'Reply on RC1 and RC2', D.A.J. Jaffe, 03 Dec 2022

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload
AR by D.A.J. Jaffe on behalf of the Authors (24 Dec 2022)  Author's response   Author's tracked changes   Manuscript 
ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (03 Jan 2023) by Albert Presto
RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (13 Jan 2023)
RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (22 Jan 2023)
ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (02 Feb 2023) by Albert Presto
AR by D.A.J. Jaffe on behalf of the Authors (07 Feb 2023)  Author's response   Author's tracked changes   Manuscript 
ED: Publish as is (13 Feb 2023) by Albert Presto
AR by D.A.J. Jaffe on behalf of the Authors (21 Feb 2023)
Download
Short summary
PurpleAir sensors (PASs) are low-cost tools to measure fine particulate matter (PM) concentrations. However, the raw PAS data have significant biases, so the sensors must be corrected. We analyzed data from numerous sites and found that the standard correction to the PAS Purple Air data is accurate in urban pollution events and smoke events but leads to a 6-fold underestimate in the PM2.5 concentrations in dust events. We propose a new correction algorithm to address this problem.