Recently increased anthropogenic aerosols change the radiative energy balance and affect human life. The management of air quality requires monitoring both the local emissions and transported pollutants. In order to estimate the quantitative contribution of long-range transport from remote sources on aerosol concentrations in Seoul, the airmasses were classified into five types with respect to their pathways. When airmass came from west over strong emission regions in China, high concentrations

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... of PM 10 , PM 2.5 , black carbon (BC), organic carbon (OC), and elemental carbon (EC) were found, even higher than those for the stagnated airmass. High OC concentrations were found when airmass came from north while BC, EC, and PM 2.5 concentrations were lower than those of the stagnated airmasses. During dust events, the PM 2.5 and PM 10 concentrations increased significantly while carbonaceous aerosol concentrations did not increased. The temporal variations of aerosol concentrations in Seoul were affected by the seasonal variations of airmass pathways. The high PM 2.5 concentrations over 100 μg m −3 appeared most frequently when the airmasses came from west.