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Anthropogenic emissions in Asia have significantly increased during the last two decades; as a result, the induced air pollution and its influences on radiative forcing and public health are becoming increasingly prominent. The Aerodyne Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (AMS) has been widely deployed in Asia for real-time characterization of aerosol chemistry. In this paper, we review the AMS measurements in Asia, mainly in China, Korea, Japan, and India since 2001 and summarize the key results and findings. The mass concentrations of non-refractory submicron aerosol species (NR-PM1) showed large spatial distributions with high mass loadings occurring in India and north and northwest China (60.2–81.3 μg m−3), whereas much lower values were observed in Korea, Japan, Singapore and regional background sites (7.5–15.1 μg m−3). Aerosol composition varied largely in different regions, but was overall …