In recent years the long-range transport of Asian atmospheric pollutants (for instance, acid pollutants, Asian dust, biomass burning and mercury) to Taiwan has been widely paid attention. In order to clarify the intercontinental and regional transport and to collect the atmospheric baseline data, the Lulin Atmospheric Background Station (LABS, 2862 m MSL), located at Mt. Lulin in central Taiwan, has been operated since 13 April 2006. This project integrates the researchers in the fields of precipitation chemistry, gas chemistry, aerosol chemistry, atmospheric mercury and radiation to test and maintain the instruments, conduct data analysis and construct long-term database. Up to now, total on-site maintenances (includes regular and mobile) are 53 times. The data acquisition rate for gases and meteorological instruments are greater than 90%, whereas atmospheric mercury, aerosols and radiation instruments shows lower values. During the project conducting period, the average concentrations of CO, O3 and PM10 are about 145.2 ppb, 33.5 ppb and 11.4 g m-3, respectively. The average pH value of precipitation is 5.11. The average concentrations of mercury such as GEM, RGM and PHg are about 1.57 ng m-3, 13.4 pg m-3 and 0.1 pg m-3, respectively. Monthly variation shows the high concentration of pollutants generally occurred during spring time, especially in March. Integrating trajectory analysis and chemical component analysis, we suggest the high concentration events are most likely associated with the biomass burning from SE Asia. The atmospheric background values for CO, O3, and PM10 in Lulin are estimated to be about 122.4 ppb, 34.4 ppb, and 4.1 g m-3, respectively. Additionally, we have established intensive international collaborations with USEPA, NOAA, NASA, and Japan Mt. Fuji Project. We have also participated international experiments or campaigns including UNEP/ABC/EAREX, 7-SEAS, and BASE-Asia. The LABS is now part of global networks, for instance, NASA/AERONET, NASA/MPLNet, NOAA/GMD/CCGG sampling network. We also held the International Workshop on 7SEAS and the 4th Anniversary of Lulun Atmospheric Background Station in Chiung-Li on June 16-17, 2010. We invited many domestic and foreign scholars and demonstrated recent research results of LABS. Dr. Betsy Andrews (NOAA) visited LABS on 2-5 November for annual maintenance, data editing, instrument calibration, and education and training. On November 11-12, 2010, we participated an international meeting held in EPA, entitled "Atmospheric mercury monitoring data quality seminars". After the meeting (November 13-14, 2010), the U.S. EPA experts visited LABS for instruments upgrades. They were impressed by the performance of site operation and personnel. The information about LABS can be found at the web site, http://labs.org.tw.

Precipitation chemistry, trace gas, aerosol, mercury, radiation