The ice nucleating ability of pollen:: Part II. Laboratory studies in immersion and contact freezing modes

Abstract

Laboratory tests were conducted of the ice nucleating ability of four kinds of pollen in the immersion and the contact freezing modes. The diameters of the selected pollen were between 25 and 70 μm. The experiments were carried out at the Mainz vertical wind tunnel with freely suspended supercooled droplets at temperatures down to −28 °C. The immersion freezing experiments were conducted with drops of radii between 250 and 375 μm formed from distilled water with a defined amount of pollen added. The drops were freely floated in the wind tunnel while being supercooled. For the contact freezing experiments, a short burst of pollen was allowed to collide with freely suspended, supercooled pure water drops of 360-μm radius. The results showed that particle-free water drops in particle-free air in the wind tunnel did not freeze at temperatures above −28 °C while water drops containing pollen froze at temperatures as high as −9 °C, and water drops colliding with pollen froze at temperatures −5 °C and lower. Combined with earlier results about the ice nucleating ability of some bacteria, marine plankton, and leaf litters, the present results confirm the importance of biological aerosol particles as potential ice nuclei at relatively warm temperatures.