scholarly journals The microscopic features of heterogeneous ice nucleation may affect the macroscopic morphology of atmospheric ice crystals

2013 ◽  
Vol 167 ◽  
pp. 389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Cox ◽  
Zamaan Raza ◽  
Shawn M. Kathmann ◽  
Ben Slater ◽  
Angelos Michaelides
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (20) ◽  
pp. 15437-15450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Hummel ◽  
Corinna Hoose ◽  
Bernhard Pummer ◽  
Caroline Schaupp ◽  
Janine Fröhlich-Nowoisky ◽  
...  

Abstract. Primary ice formation, which is an important process for mixed-phase clouds with an impact on their lifetime, radiative balance, and hence the climate, strongly depends on the availability of ice-nucleating particles (INPs). Supercooled droplets within these clouds remain liquid until an INP immersed in or colliding with the droplet reaches its activation temperature. Only a few aerosol particles are acting as INPs and the freezing efficiency varies among them. Thus, the fraction of supercooled water in the cloud depends on the specific properties and concentrations of the INPs. Primary biological aerosol particles (PBAPs) have been identified as very efficient INPs at high subzero temperatures, but their very low atmospheric concentrations make it difficult to quantify their impact on clouds. Here we use the regional atmospheric model COSMO–ART to simulate the heterogeneous ice nucleation by PBAPs during a 1-week case study on a domain covering Europe. We focus on three highly ice-nucleation-active PBAP species, Pseudomonas syringae bacteria cells and spores from the fungi Cladosporium sp. and Mortierella alpina. PBAP emissions are parameterized in order to represent the entirety of bacteria and fungal spores in the atmosphere. Thus, only parts of the simulated PBAPs are assumed to act as INPs. The ice nucleation parameterizations are specific for the three selected species and are based on a deterministic approach. The PBAP concentrations simulated in this study are within the range of previously reported results from other modeling studies and atmospheric measurements. Two regimes of PBAP INP concentrations are identified: a temperature-limited and a PBAP-limited regime, which occur at temperatures above and below a maximal concentration at around −10 ∘C, respectively. In an ensemble of control and disturbed simulations, the change in the average ice crystal concentration by biological INPs is not statistically significant, suggesting that PBAPs have no significant influence on the average state of the cloud ice phase. However, if the cloud top temperature is below −15 ∘C, PBAP can influence the cloud ice phase and produce ice crystals in the absence of other INPs. Nevertheless, the number of produced ice crystals is very low and it has no influence on the modeled number of cloud droplets and hence the cloud structure.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Hummel ◽  
Corinna Hoose ◽  
Bernhard Pummer ◽  
Caroline E. Schaupp ◽  
Janine Fröhlich-Nowoisky ◽  
...  

Abstract. Primary ice formation, which is an important process for mixed-phase clouds with impact on their lifetime, radiative balance and hence the climate, strongly depends on the availability of ice nucleating particles (INPs). Supercooled droplets within these clouds remain liquid until an INP immersed in or colliding with to the droplet gets reaches its activation temperature. Only a few aerosol particles are acting as INPs and the freezing efficiency varies among them. Thus, the fraction of supercooled water in the cloud depends on the specific properties and concentrations of the INPs. Primary biological aerosol particles (PBAPs) have been identified as very efficient INPs at high subzero temperatures, but their very low atmospheric concentrations make it difficult to quantify their impact on clouds. Here we use the regional atmospheric model COSMO-ART to simulate the heterogeneous ice nucleation by PBAPs during a 1-week case study on a domain covering Europe. We focus on three highly ice nucleation active PBAP species, Pseudomonas syringae bacteria cells and spores from the fungi Cladosporium sp. and Mortierella alpina. PBAP emissions are parameterized in order to represent the entirety of bacteria and fungal spores in the atmosphere. Thus, only parts of the simulated PBAP are assumed to act as INP. The ice nucleation parameterizations are specific for the three selected species and are based on a deterministic approach. The PBAP concentrations simulated in this study are within the range of previously reported results from other modelling studies and atmospheric measurements. Two regimes of PBAP INP concentrations are identified: a temperature-limited and a PBAP-limited regime, which occur at temperatures above and below a maximal concentration at around −10 °C, respectively. In an ensemble of control and disturbed simulations, the change in the average ice crystal concentration by biological INPs is not statistically 1significant, suggesting that PBAP have no significant influence on the average state of the cloud ice phase. However, if the cloud top temperature is below −15 °C, PBAP can influence the cloud ice phase and produce ice crystals in the absence of other INPs. Nevertheless, the number of produced ice crystals is very low and it has no influence on the modelled number of cloud droplets and hence the cloud structure.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Setigui Aboubacar Keita ◽  
Eric Girard ◽  
Jean-Christophe Raut ◽  
Maud Leriche ◽  
Jean-Pierre Blanchet ◽  
...  

Abstract. In the Arctic, during polar night and early spring, ice clouds are separated into two leading types: (1) TIC1 clouds characterized by large concentration of very small crystals, and TIC2 clouds characterized by low concentration of large ice crystals. Using suitable parameterization of heterogeneous ice nucleation is essential for properly representing ice cloud in meteorological and climate model and subsequently understanding their interactions with aerosols and radiation. Here, we describe a new parameterization for ice crystals formation by heterogeneous nucleation coupled to aerosols chemistry in WRF-Chem. The parameterization is implemented in the Milbrandt and Yau’s two-moment cloud microphysics scheme and we assess how the WRF-Chem model responds to the real time interaction between chemistry and the new parameterization. Well-documented reference cases provided us in situ data from the spring 2008 Indirect and Semi-Direct Aerosol Campaign (ISDAC) campaign over Alaska. Our analysis reveals that the new parameterization clearly improves the representation of the IWC in polluted or unpolluted air masses and shows the poor performance of the reference parameterization in representing ice clouds with low IWC. The new parameterization is, thus able to represent TIC1 and TIC2 microphysical characteristics at the top of the clouds were heterogeneous ice nucleation is most likely occurring even knowing the bias of simulated aerosols by WRF-Chem over Arctic.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 1503-1520 ◽  
Author(s):  
X. Shi ◽  
X. Liu ◽  
K. Zhang

Abstract. In order to improve the treatment of ice nucleation in a more realistic manner in the Community Atmosphere Model version 5.3 (CAM5.3), the effects of pre-existing ice crystals on ice nucleation in cirrus clouds are considered. In addition, by considering the in-cloud variability in ice saturation ratio, homogeneous nucleation takes place spatially only in a portion of the cirrus cloud rather than in the whole area of the cirrus cloud. Compared to observations, the ice number concentrations and the probability distributions of ice number concentration are both improved with the updated treatment. The pre-existing ice crystals significantly reduce ice number concentrations in cirrus clouds, especially at mid- to high latitudes in the upper troposphere (by a factor of ~10). Furthermore, the contribution of heterogeneous ice nucleation to cirrus ice crystal number increases considerably. Besides the default ice nucleation parameterization of Liu and Penner (2005, hereafter LP) in CAM5.3, two other ice nucleation parameterizations of Barahona and Nenes (2009, hereafter BN) and Kärcher et al. (2006, hereafter KL) are implemented in CAM5.3 for the comparison. In-cloud ice crystal number concentration, percentage contribution from heterogeneous ice nucleation to total ice crystal number, and pre-existing ice effects simulated by the three ice nucleation parameterizations have similar patterns in the simulations with present-day aerosol emissions. However, the change (present-day minus pre-industrial times) in global annual mean column ice number concentration from the KL parameterization (3.24 × 106 m−2) is less than that from the LP (8.46 × 106 m−2) and BN (5.62 × 106 m−2) parameterizations. As a result, the experiment using the KL parameterization predicts a much smaller anthropogenic aerosol long-wave indirect forcing (0.24 W m−2) than that using the LP (0.46 W m−2) and BN (0.39 W m−2) parameterizations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 17635-17679 ◽  
Author(s):  
X. Shi ◽  
X. Liu ◽  
K. Zhang

Abstract. In order to improve the treatment of ice nucleation in a more realistic manner in the Community Atmospheric Model version 5.3 (CAM5.3), the effects of preexisting ice crystals on ice nucleation in cirrus clouds are considered. In addition, by considering the in-cloud variability in ice saturation ratio, homogeneous nucleation takes place spatially only in a portion of cirrus cloud rather than in the whole area of cirrus cloud. With these improvements, the two unphysical limiters used in the representation of ice nucleation are removed. Compared to observations, the ice number concentrations and the probability distributions of ice number concentration are both improved with the updated treatment. The preexisting ice crystals significantly reduce ice number concentrations in cirrus clouds, especially at mid- to high latitudes in the upper troposphere (by a factor of ~10). Furthermore, the contribution of heterogeneous ice nucleation to cirrus ice crystal number increases considerably. Besides the default ice nucleation parameterization of Liu and Penner (2005, hereafter LP) in CAM5.3, two other ice nucleation parameterizations of Barahona and Nenes (2009, hereafter BN) and Kärcher et al. (2006, hereafter KL) are implemented in CAM5.3 for the comparison. In-cloud ice crystal number concentration, percentage contribution from heterogeneous ice nucleation to total ice crystal number, and preexisting ice effects simulated by the three ice nucleation parameterizations have similar patterns in the simulations with present-day aerosol emissions. However, the change (present-day minus pre-industrial times) in global annual mean column ice number concentration from the KL parameterization (3.24 × 106 m−2) is obviously less than that from the LP (8.46 × 106 m−2) and BN (5.62 × 106 m−2) parameterizations. As a result, experiment using the KL parameterization predicts a much smaller anthropogenic aerosol longwave indirect forcing (0.24 W m−2) than that using the LP (0.46 W m−2) and BN (0.39 W m−2) parameterizations.


2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (19) ◽  
pp. 5081-5091 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Marcolli ◽  
S. Gedamke ◽  
T. Peter ◽  
B. Zobrist

Abstract. A differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) was used to explore heterogeneous ice nucleation of emulsified aqueous suspensions of two Arizona test dust (ATD) samples with particle diameters of nominally 0–3 and 0–7 μm, respectively. Aqueous suspensions with ATD concentrations of 0.01–20 wt% have been investigated. The DSC thermograms exhibit a homogeneous and a heterogeneous freezing peak whose intensity ratios vary with the ATD concentration in the aqueous suspensions. Homogeneous freezing temperatures are in good agreement with recent measurements by other techniques. Depending on ATD concentration, heterogeneous ice nucleation occurred at temperatures as high as 256 K or down to the onset of homogeneous ice nucleation (237 K). For ATD-induced ice formation Classical Nucleation Theory (CNT) offers a suitable framework to parameterize nucleation rates as a function of temperature, experimentally determined ATD size, and emulsion droplet volume distributions. The latter two quantities serve to estimate the total heterogeneous surface area present in a droplet, whereas the suitability of an individual heterogeneous site to trigger nucleation is described by the compatibility function (or contact angle) in CNT. The intensity ratio of homogeneous to heterogeneous freezing peaks is in good agreement with the assumption that the ATD particles are randomly distributed amongst the emulsion droplets. The observed dependence of the heterogeneous freezing temperatures on ATD concentrations cannot be described by assuming a constant contact angle for all ATD particles, but requires the ice nucleation efficiency of ATD particles to be (log)normally distributed amongst the particles. Best quantitative agreement is reached when explicitly assuming that high-compatibility sites are rare and that therefore larger particles have on average more and better active sites than smaller ones. This analysis suggests that a particle has to have a diameter of at least 0.1 μm to exhibit on average one active site.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (10) ◽  
pp. 6495-6509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karoliina Ignatius ◽  
Thomas B. Kristensen ◽  
Emma Järvinen ◽  
Leonid Nichman ◽  
Claudia Fuchs ◽  
...  

Abstract. There are strong indications that particles containing secondary organic aerosol (SOA) exhibit amorphous solid or semi-solid phase states in the atmosphere. This may facilitate heterogeneous ice nucleation and thus influence cloud properties. However, experimental ice nucleation studies of biogenic SOA are scarce. Here, we investigated the ice nucleation ability of viscous SOA particles. The SOA particles were produced from the ozone initiated oxidation of α-pinene in an aerosol chamber at temperatures in the range from −38 to −10 °C at 5–15 % relative humidity with respect to water to ensure their formation in a highly viscous phase state, i.e. semi-solid or glassy. The ice nucleation ability of SOA particles with different sizes was investigated with a new continuous flow diffusion chamber. For the first time, we observed heterogeneous ice nucleation of viscous α-pinene SOA for ice saturation ratios between 1.3 and 1.4 significantly below the homogeneous freezing limit. The maximum frozen fractions found at temperatures between −39.0 and −37.2 °C ranged from 6 to 20 % and did not depend on the particle surface area. Global modelling of monoterpene SOA particles suggests that viscous biogenic SOA particles are indeed present in regions where cirrus cloud formation takes place. Hence, they could make up an important contribution to the global ice nucleating particle budget.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document