Ground-level Particulate Sulphate and Gaseous Sulphur Dioxide Downwind of an Aluminium Smelter
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Particulate sulphate (pSO42–) is an atmospheric pollutant known to affect human/environmental health and global radiative-forcing. The Rio Tinto (RT) aluminium smelting facility in Kitimat, British Columbia, is the primary source of sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions to the surrounding Kitimat Valley, a relatively isolated and unpolluted region. A network of active two-stage filter-packs and passive-diffusive samplers was established between June 2017 to October 2018 with the objective to evaluate the spatiotemporal variation and relative contribution of pSO42– to total anthropogenic atmospheric oxidized sulphur (SOx = SO2 + pSO42–). Average pSO42– across all sites (n = 9) was 0.41 µg m–3 (24–48 hour exposures) and ranged from 0.03 to 2.03 µg m–3. In contrast, average filter-pack SO2 ranged from 0.11 to 8.9 µg m–3 (during the same exposure periods). The filter-pack pSO42–/SOx concentration ratio (Fs) increased downwind of the smelter, indicating that the relative concentration of pSO42– increased with distance from the smelter. Furthermore, the increasing pSO42–/vanadium (V) ratio (used as a tracer of smelter emissions) relative to distance confirmed particulate formation was occurring within the emission plume during the sampling period. Irrespective of in-plume aerosol formation, pSO42– contributed a relatively minor fraction of total atmospheric SOx within the emission plume (field campaign averages Fs < 20%; pSO42– < 0.1 µg S m–3; SO2 > 1.0 µg S m–3).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".