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The North China Plain experiences frequent severe haze pollution during all seasons. Here we present the results from a summer campaign that was conducted at Xianghe, a suburban site located between the megacities of Beijing and Tianjin. Aerosol particle composition was measured in situ by an Aerosol Chemical Speciation Monitor along with a suite of collocated measurements during 1–30 June 2013. Our results showed that aerosol composition at the suburban site was overall similar to that observed in Beijing, which was mainly composed of organics (39%), nitrate (20%), and sulfate (18%). Positive matrix factorization of organic aerosol (OA) identified four OA factors with different sources and processes. While secondary organic aerosol dominated OA, on average accounting for 70%, biomass burning OA (BBOA) was also observed to have a considerable contribution (11%) for the entire study period. The …