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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-1855</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Quantitative insights into regime-dependent aerosol pH variability in an ammonia-rich urban atmosphere from explainable machine learning</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Duan</surname>
<given-names>Jing</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2182-1847</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Wang</surname>
<given-names>Ting</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Huang</surname>
<given-names>Ru-Jin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff3">
<sup>3</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Ren</surname>
<given-names>Jingye</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhong</surname>
<given-names>Haobin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff4">
<sup>4</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Xu</surname>
<given-names>Wei</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9590-1906</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff5">
<sup>5</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Lin</surname>
<given-names>Chunshui</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3175-6778</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Zhan</surname>
<given-names>Yanan</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff2">
<sup>2</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Huang</surname>
<given-names>Huabin</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff6">
<sup>6</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Li</surname>
<given-names>Yongjie</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7631-9136</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff7">
<sup>7</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Loess Science, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an 710061, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff2">
<label>2</label>
<addr-line>Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi&apos;an Jiaotong University, Xi&apos;an 710049, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff3">
<label>3</label>
<addr-line>University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff4">
<label>4</label>
<addr-line>School of Advanced Materials Engineering, Jiaxing Nanhu University, Jiaxing, 314001, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff5">
<label>5</label>
<addr-line>State Key Laboratory of Advanced Environmental Technology, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff6">
<label>6</label>
<addr-line>College of Environment and Public Health, Xiamen Huaxia University, Xiamen 361024, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<aff id="aff7">
<label>7</label>
<addr-line>Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau SAR 999078, China</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>17</day>
<month>04</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>23</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Jing Duan et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1855/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1855/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1855/egusphere-2026-1855.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-1855/egusphere-2026-1855.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Aerosol acidity (pH) plays a crucial role in atmospheric chemistry. Meteorological conditions and chemical properties jointly contribute to pH variation, yet their behavior differs across environmental regimes and remain incompletely understood. Here, we integrate machine learning with interpretable model analyses, field observations, and thermodynamic modeling to quantitatively assess the relative contributions and associations of key factors to aerosol pH variability in an ammonia-rich urban atmosphere. Temperature exhibits a strong negative contribution to pH variation, with an average decrease of ~0.6 units per 10 &amp;deg;C increase. Excess ammonia, nitrate-to-sulfate mass ratio (N/S), and PM&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt; mass loading are positively associated with pH, showing stronger sensitivities at lower values and diminishing responses at higher levels. In contrast, the contribution of relative humidity (RH) depends strongly on its interactions with temperature, aerosol composition, and mass loading, resulting in pronounced regime-dependent reversals. Higher RH is associated with enhanced aerosol acidity under low-temperature (&amp;lt; 15 &amp;deg;C), nitrate-dominant (N/S &amp;gt; 1.25), or high-mass (PM&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt; &amp;gt; 50 &amp;mu;g m&lt;sup&gt;-3&lt;/sup&gt;) conditions, whereas the opposite tendency occurs under warmer, sulfate-dominant, or low-mass regimes. This study provides new quantitative insights into the coupled meteorological and chemical modulation of pH and highlight the importance of multifactor interactions in understanding aerosol acidity variability in real-world atmospheres.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="23"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>National Natural Science Foundation of China</funding-source>
<award-id>42525301</award-id>
<award-id>42430708</award-id>
<award-id>42577125</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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