Data from: Evaluation of a Portable Spider-MAGIC and OPS for Unified Size Distribution Measurements. In Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment (CAICE)

Publication abstract: Ambient aerosol sizes span orders of magnitude, requiring a combination of instruments to measure the particle number size distribution (PNSD). The Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer (SMPS; TSI Inc.) and Aerodynamic Particle Sizer (APS; TSI Inc.) are often paired to cover 10 nm to 20 μm. However, more portable, moderate resolution options now exist at lower costs. Here, we evaluate the Spider-MAGIC (SM; Aerosol Dynamics Inc.) and Optical Particle Sizer (OPS; TSI Inc.) combination (SM-OPS) against the SMPS-APS for unified measurements of laboratory-generated sea spray aerosol (SSA) and ambient coastal marine aerosol. The SM-OPS and SMPS-APS PNSDs showed good agreement and submicron number concentrations were strongly correlated for both laboratory-generated SSA (r = 0.85, p < 0.05) and ambient aerosol (r = 0.95, p < 0.05), and a two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test showed that the SM-OPS and SMPS-APS size distributions were not statistically different at the 95% confidence level. The SM-OPS also showed the ability to capture key parameters of the size distribution, with geometric mean diameter correlations, r ≥ 0.76. When combined, the SM-OPS boasts a small size (0.03 m3, 6.5 kg) and moderate total cost, representing reductions of 90% in size, 83% in weight, and 60% in cost compared to the SMPS-APS. The advantages in portability, combined with results presented here demonstrate that the SM-OPS serves as a practical alternative for field measurements of unified PNSDs.