ATM-METFIN · Quantifying atmospheric ice nucleating particle (INP) concentrations via advances in measurement techniques and field studies of ice nucleation

Quantifying atmospheric ice nucleating particle (INP) concentrations via advances in measurement techniques and field studies of ice nucleation

Atmospheric aerosol particles play an important role in the global climate by way of influencing Earth’s hydrological cycle, energy and radiation balance. Due to their importance, aerosol-cloud interactions have been a subject of intense research over the last several decades. Despite that, exact quantification of aerosol effects on the changing cloud properties and the ability to predict future climate based on expected changes to global aerosol burden have been challenging. Ubiquitous in the atmosphere, atmospheric aerosol particles can participate in the formation of liquid and ice clouds by acting as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and ice nucleating particles (INPs), respectively. Both have received a lot of attention in recent years, with a multitude of studies attempting to quantify the importance of aerosols in the aerosol-cloud-climate system. The objectives of the project included the quantification of ice nucleating particles in condensation/immersion freezing modes under mixed-phase cloud conditions, the comparison to previously published data from other locations around the globe, the investigation of INP physical and chemical properties and the identification of the already known INP species in the boreal environment. The main results presented several important questions and conclusions for future ambient INP studies. First and foremost, it was not possible to identify physical and chemical properties of ambient INPs despite the complexity of instrumental setup and a multitude of additional instrumentations deployed during the campaign. Unfortunately, the current instrumental setup coupled with the rarity of ambient INPs rendered any speculations about INP identity inconclusive. If the future INP field studies aim to explicitly identify the physical and chemical properties of INPs, a single-particle analysis of ice crystal residuals must be carried out. The second important question that needs to be addressed as a result of this work is the necessity for future INP measurements. Future ambient INP studies need to explicitly focus on the physical and chemical properties of the INPs and whether they are different from the rest of the aerosol population. Additionally, future studies should aim to assess whether the explicit physics and chemistry of INPs can be and need to be parameterised in order to understand aerosol-cloud interactions on the global scale.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз