0000000000326218
AUTHOR
Ottmar Möhler
In Situ, Airborne Instrumentation: Addressing and Solving Measurement Problems in Ice Clouds
The workshop on in situ airborne instrumentation: addressing and solving measurement problems in ice clouds, June 25-27, 2010, Oregon, aimed to identify unresolved questions concerning ice formation and evolution in ice clouds, assess the current state of instrumentation that can address these problems, introduce emerging technology that may overcome current measurement issues, and recommend future courses of action to improve our understanding of ice cloud microphysical. Eleven presentations were made covering measurement challenges associated measuring the composition and concentration of all the modes of ice nuclei (IN), measuring the morphology, mass, surface, and optical properties of …
A comprehensive characterization of ice nucleation by three different types of cellulose particles immersed in water: lessons learned and future research directions
We present the laboratory results of immersion freezing efficiencies of cellulose particles at supercooled temperature (T) conditions. Three types of chemically homogeneous cellulose samples are used as surrogates that represent supermicron and submicron ice nucleating plant structural polymers. These samples include micro-crystalline cellulose (MCC), fibrous cellulose (FC) and nano-crystalline cellulose (NCC). Our experimental data show that particles resembling the MCC lab particle occur also in the atmosphere. Our immersion freezing dataset includes data from various ice nucleation measurement techniques available at seventeen different institutions, including nine dry dispersion and ele…
Inadvertent climate modification due to anthropogenic lead
Atmospheric particles are thought to initiate the majority of terrestrial precipitation. Field-based measurements of ice-crystal residues, together with controlled environment experiments on artificial clouds, suggest that anthropogenic lead-containing particles are among the most efficient ice-forming substances in the atmosphere.
Particle shapes and infrared extinction spectra of nitric acid dihydrate crystals: Optical constants of the β-NAD modification
Satellite- and aircraft-based mid-infrared measurements of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) have provided spectroscopic evidence for the presence of β-NAT (nitric acid trihydrate) particles. Metastable nitric acid hydrate phases such as α-NAT and α-NAD (nitric acid dihydrate) have been frequently observed in laboratory experiments, but not yet detected as a constituent of PSCs in atmospheric measurements. As for the β-NAD modification, its formation was first observed in X-ray diffraction measurements when the low-temperature α-NAD phase was warmed to a temperature above 210 K. Its infrared spectrum has been reported, but so far no optical constants have been de…
A comprehensive laboratory study on the immersion freezing behavior of illite NX particles: a comparison of 17 ice nucleation measurement techniques
Immersion freezing is the most relevant heterogeneous ice nucleation mechanism through which ice crystals are formed in mixed-phase clouds. In recent years, an increasing number of laboratory experiments utilizing a variety of instruments have examined immersion freezing activity of atmospherically relevant ice-nucleating particles. However, an intercomparison of these laboratory results is a difficult task because investigators have used different ice nucleation (IN) measurement methods to produce these results. A remaining challenge is to explore the sensitivity and accuracy of these techniques and to understand how the IN results are potentially influenced or biased by experimental param…
Intercomparing different devices for the investigation of ice nucleating particles using Snomax<sup>®</sup> as test substance
Abstract. Seven different instruments and measurement methods were used to examine the immersion freezing of bacterial ice nuclei from Snomax® (hereafter Snomax), a product containing ice-active protein complexes from non-viable Pseudomonas syringae bacteria. The experimental conditions were kept as similar as possible for the different measurements. Of the participating instruments, some examined droplets which had been made from suspensions directly, and the others examined droplets activated on previously generated Snomax particles, with particle diameters of mostly a few hundred nanometers and up to a few micrometers in some cases. Data were obtained in the temperature range from −2 to …
Aging of biogenic secondary organic aerosol via gas-phase OH radical reactions
The Multiple Chamber Aerosol Chemical Aging Study (MUCHACHAS) tested the hypothesis that hydroxyl radical (OH) aging significantly increases the concentration of first-generation biogenic secondary organic aerosol (SOA). OH is the dominant atmospheric oxidant, and MUCHACHAS employed environmental chambers of very different designs, using multiple OH sources to explore a range of chemical conditions and potential sources of systematic error. We isolated the effect of OH aging, confirming our hypothesis while observing corresponding changes in SOA properties. The mass increases are consistent with an existing gap between global SOA sources and those predicted in models, and can be described b…