Particle Scavenging Properties of Rain Clarified by a Complementary Study with Bulk and Semi-bulk Samples

It is a well-known fact that precipitation plays an important role in capturing ambient particles, however, the details of particle scavenging properties have not been fully proved. To clarify the particle scavenging properties, a complementary study was carried out with the bulk and semi-bulk rain samples collected in an urban city of Japan. pH showed a continued downturn for a little bit at the beginning rainfall and then a turn-up in the following rainfall. The recorded pH values of rainwater (ranged from 3.5-4.6) demonstrated that the strong acid rain was observed during our field measurements. Compared to the subsequent rainfall, electrical conductivity in the beginning rainfall had about 1.3 times higher level. Sulfur showed an overwhelmingly high concentration compared to other elements in both ambient total suspended particles (TSP) and rain samples. On the contrary to ambient TSP, every element including Ca and Zn in rain showed a continued rise in concentration accompanied by increasing of rainfall amount. During the first period of the rainfall there was no meaningful change in elemental carbon concentration, however, it was largely increased (up to $0.2mg\;L^{-1}$) in the sequential rainfall (4.0-4.5 mm rainfall amount). The theoretically calculated number concentration of particles scavenged by raindrops showed a strong decrease of with the increasing droplet diameter regardless of particle type.