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. Till present time, the average concentrations of CO, O3 and PM10 are about 120.5 ppb, 33.5 ppb and 10.1 g m-3, respectively. The average pH value of precipitation is 5.73. The average concentrations of mercury such as GEM, RGM and PHg are about 1.78 ng m-3, 41.65 pg m-3 and 8.96 pg m-3, respectively. The average aerosol optical depth is 0.101. The background concentrations of CO, O3 and PM10 are estimated to be about 81.9 ppb, 27.7 ppb and 6.1 g m-3, respectively. About 32 % of the days in a year can be defined to be polluted. Especially in March, the concentrations of above three pollutants show 200% higher than their background values. To summarize the results, the maximum concentration of pollutants generally occurred during spring time, especially in March, corresponding to the biomass burning from SE Asia. Besides, 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 and BASE-Asia. The LABS is now part of global networks, for instance, NASA/AERONet, NOAA/Global sampling network.

Precipertation chemistry, trace gas, aerosol, mecury, radiation