Abstract:To compare and evaluate the performance of three major instruments for aerosol measurement, aerodynamic particle sizer(APS), scanning mobility particle sizer(SMPS) and wide-range particle spectrometer(WPS), a field study was conducted on campus of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology during the summer of 2010. The number concentrations, size distributions of aerosol particles measured by the three instruments were analyzed and compared, with a focus on the particles between 0.01~10μm in diameter. The variation trends of the particle concentration measured by the three instruments were in good agreement. But differences in absolute values of number concentration measured by the three instruments were also evident with SMPS providing the highest values, followed by WPS. APS showed the lowest concentration in the three instruments. There was a very good correlation between the values measured by SMPS and WPS in the size range between 0.02~0.2μm. In comparison with WPS, APS provided more available size spectra measurements. Bimodal distributions in diurnal variation were captured by all the three instruments, but the peak concentration and the size range measured by SMPS were higher than that by WPS. The differences among the three instruments were not sensitive to meteorological conditions and precipitation.