Rural background sites, representative of a wider area, are important for investigating the influence of regional and long-range transport, and long-term trends in PM concentrations. However, during periods with a shallow atmospheric boundary layer, even rural background sites are significantly affected by local sources on the ground. Therefore, data measured at the ground may, in certain situations, not be representative of the wider area. For these reasons, measurements at higher elevations above ground are needed to assess the representativeness of conventional ground-based measurements to distinguish the air pollution origin. The presented study aims to examine and describe the temporal and spatial variations of speciated PM₁₀ and reactive trace gases, and their origin, at a rural background situated in the lignite basin area.