Estimates of aqueous-phase sulfate production from tandem differential mobility analysis

Abstract

Abstract During June and July of 2004, airborne measurements of size-resolved aerosol properties were made over the coastal Pacific near Marina, California. Tandem differential mobility analysis was used to determine the hygroscopic properties of these aerosols and, subsequently, to examine the change in soluble mass after the aerosol had been cloud-processed. Three of the eight cases analyzed during the field campaign exhibited increased soluble mass attributable to cloud-processing. The calculated change in soluble mass after cloud-processing, derived from measurements made below and above cloud, ranged from 1.08 ϒ g m−3 to 1.40 ϒ g m−3. These values are in agreement with those determined using data collected during previous field studies in the same region. Aerosol size distributions measured throughout the study with a Passive Cavity Aerosol Spectrometer Probe were averaged to create a single representative distribution, which was used to examine the impact of the addition of sulfate to a typical aerosol measured during this project. Mass light-scattering efficiencies were calculated for both the initial and cloud-processed size distributions using Mie-Lorenz theory. These calculations show that the increase in mass light-scattering efficiency following passage through a single non-precipitating cloud to be 14%, which is in agreement with findings of previous studies in the same region. This new technique produces results that are consistent with existing methods for measuring in-cloud sulfate production and has the advantage of intrinsic consistency with the hygroscopicity and CCN activity of the aerosol.