A comparison of urban and suburban precipitation chemistry

Precipitation samples at an urban Chicago site and a nearby suburban site were compared in order to examine the influence of emissions within a large urban area on local precipitation chemistry. Precipitation samples were collected from June 1981 to May 1982, initially for events and subsequently weekly, and precipitation-weighted concentrations (PWCs) of the major chemical constituents were calculated from concurrent urban-suburban pairs of samples, stratified according to the estimated mixed-layer wind quadrant. Overall, PWCs at the urban site were higher than those at the suburban site for Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, NH₄⁺, NO₃⁻ and Cl⁻; approximately equal for Na⁺ and SO₄²⁻; and lower for H⁺. For precipitation in southwesterly flow, in which the suburban site was upwind of the urban site and most urban emissions, PWCs of all species except Na⁺ were higher at the urban site. For the few precipitation cases in northeasterly flow, however, differences between sites did not have a pattern consistent with a reversal in the upwind-downwind relationship.