Aerosols at a mountaintop observatory in Arizona

Abstract

This paper discusses physics of aerosols measured at the summit of Mt. Lemmon, Arizona (2790 m), from February to May 2002, where “clean” air representative of the free troposphere sometimes occurs. We confirmed Marti's findings of a persistent daily variation in the number concentration of condensation nuclei (diameter > 10 nm), with a strong maximum occurring in the afternoon and minimum in the early morning. These particles show evidence of growth at rates of 10–23 nm per hour. The diurnal variation was present even on days when the planetary boundary layer remained below the mountain. From the rate of growth and Maxwellian diffusion theory, we deduce that precursor condensable species are present in daytime concentrations of 107–108 cm−3, and that these are produced at a rate of 105–106 cm−3 s−1. Increased convection caused by solar heating of the mountain often carries contaminated air to the summit. Yet only a small (factor of 1.5) diurnal pattern was found for accumulation mode (diameter ∼ 130 nm) particles on days where the convective boundary layer passed well above the station. We hypothesize that these long‐lived (e.g., several days) aerosols are pumped into the free troposphere and remain behind at night in a residual layer. The free tropospheric aerosol size distribution measured at Mt. Lemmon was similar in shape but higher in magnitude (by around 50%) than at Jungfraujoch in the Swiss Alps (3580 m). There is much greater diurnal variation in Aitken‐sized particles (daily factor of from 7 to 10) at Mt. Lemmon than observed at Jungfraujoch (factor of from 1.0 to 1.6), evidently arising from stronger photochemical rate of productions of precursor gases.