Aitken Mode Aerosol Research Articles

Observations of the evolution of the aerosol, cloud and boundary-layer characteristics during the 1st ACE-2 Lagrangian experiment

During the 1st Lagrangian experiment of the North Atlantic Regional Aerosol Characterisation Experiment (ACE-2), a parcel of air was tagged by releasing a smart, constant level balloon into it from the Research Vessel Vodyanitskiy. The Meteorological Research Flight’s C-130 aircraft then followed this parcel over a period of 30 h characterising the marine boundary layer (MBL), the cloud and the physical and chemical aerosol evolution. The air mass had originated over the northern North Atlantic and thus was clean and had low aerosol concentrations. At the beginning of the experiment the MBL was over 1500 m deep and made up of a surface mixed layer (SML) underlying a layer containing cloud beneath a subsidence inversion. Subsidence in the free troposphere caused the depth of the MBL to almost halve during the experiment and, after 26 h, the MBL became well mixed throughout its whole depth. Salt particle mass in the MBL increased as the surface wind speed increased from 8 m s-1 to 16 m s-1 and the accumulation mode (0.1μm to 3.0 μm) aerosol concentrations quadrupled from 50 cm-3 to 200 cm-3. However, at the same time the total condensation nuclei (>3 nm) decreased from over 1000 cm-3 to 750 cm-3. The changes in the accumulation mode aerosol concentrations had a significant effect on the observed cloud microphysics. Observational evidence suggests that the important processes in controlling the Aitken mode concentration which, dominated the total CN concentration, included, scavenging of interstitial aerosol by cloud droplets, enhanced coagulation of Aitken mode aerosol and accumulation mode aerosol due to the increased sea salt aerosol surface area, and dilution of the MBL by free tropospheric air.

A modelling study on the activation of small Aitken-mode aerosol particles during CIME 97

During February 1997, one of the 2 observational periods of CIME (cloud ice mountain experiment), a joint field experiment funded by the European Commission, took place on the summit of the Puy de Dôme in the centre of France. During this experiment the droplet spectra were measured with an FSSP and the aerosol particles in the drops and in the interstitial particle phase were measured with a counterflow virtual impactor and a round jet impactor inside a windtunnel. Very low aerosol particle and drop concentrations were observed and particles as small as 25 nm in diameter were found to activate. Two datasets obtained on 15 February and 17 February were used to study the activation of the small Aitken-mode particles and the spectral form of the droplet spectrum and the scavenging fraction. Numerous sensitivity studies were performed investigating the rôle of the number density and chemical composition of the aerosol particles. The rôle of mixing inside the orographic cloud was studied by using a new technique. It considers the fact that the air arriving on the summit of the Puy de Dôme is a mixture of air of different origins. Thus, it weighs the results of a spectral scavenging model (DESCAM or EXMIX) calculated along a number of individual trajectories. The weighing function is derived from tracer and trajectory studies with a 3-dimensional mesoscale model. The model was able to reproduce the activation of aerosol particles as small as 25 nm. It was caused by the low aerosol particle number concentrations. In general, we can conclude that the variability found in the sensitivity tests of the dynamical and chemical factors allows to reproduce the shape of the observed results. As too many free parameters exit at the moment we cannot quantify the contribution of each factor studied to the observed scavenging fraction, however, it seems that dynamics dominates.