Preface of Special Issue Aerosol and Air Quality Research in Asia

First established in 1999, the Asian Aerosol Conferences (AACs) have grown rapidly in terms of international participation and the range of topics being discussed, and these now cover virtually every aspect of aerosol science and technology and air quality research. Most selected papers in this special issue were presented at the A total of 550 participants from 21 countries and representing academia, industry, and regulatory agencies attended AAC-2011, which included ~350 plenary, platform, and poster presentations. Some articles were also included in the special issue, even though they were not presented at AAC-2011, due that to their significant contributions to the scientific community. Atmospheric trace constituents i.e., trace gases, and particulate matter (PM), play key roles in the Earth's atmosphere, and because they influence tropospheric weather systems, they are also important for both the global climate and human health. For several decades efforts have been made to understand the complicated physical and chemical processes that govern the concentrations and distributions of these constituents of the atmosphere and their corresponding influences. In all, 42 papers have been collected for this special issue, and they cover a wide range of subjects, including field measurements, modeling, simulation in chamber studies, and novel environmental technology. These papers, all of which were peer reviewed, describe the recent progress that has been made in the interdisciplinary fields of environmental science. This special issue contains numerous reports involving field measurements of a wide range of substances, including PM, inorganic trace gases, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), heavy metals and bio-aerosols. In addition to the on-site field measurements, optical and satellite detection methods were also used in many of these studies. Asian dust storms are seasonal events that significantly influence regional air quality, weather, and climate. Five papers focusing on dust are included in this issue. Li et al. studied the chemical modification of dust particles during several dust-storm episodes, while Tsai et al. investigated the influence of Asian dust storms and biomass burning in southeast Asia by analyzing the marine aerosol samples from southern Taiwan. Ling et al. conducted a study of micro-meteorological elements, and investigated the vertical profiles of dust during an event over the Loess Plateau in March 2010. The dust studies included in this cover many different areas and adopt various perspectives. For example, Dobrzhinsky et al. characterized desert road dust aerosol from Afghanistan and Iraq, while Zhao et al. reported …