Data from both laboratory studies and atmospheric measurements are used to develop an empirical parameterization for the immersion freezing activity of natural mineral dust particles. Measurements made with the Colorado State University (CSU) continuous flow diffusion chamber (CFDC) when processing mineral dust aerosols at a nominal 105% relative humidity with respect to water (RHw) are taken as a measure of the immersion freezing nucleation activity of particles. Ice active frozen fractions vs. temperature for dusts representative of Saharan and Asian desert sources were consistent with similar measurements in atmospheric dust plumes for a limited set of comparisons available. The parameterization developed follows the form of one suggested previously for atmospheric particles of non-specific composition in quantifying ice nucleating particle concentrations as functions of temperature and the total number concentration of particles larger than 0.5 μm diameter. Such an approach does not explicitly account for surface area and time dependencies for ice nucleation, but sufficiently encapsulates the activation properties for potential use in regional and global modeling simulations, and possible application in developing remote sensing retrievals for ice nucleating particles. A calibration factor is introduced to account for the apparent underestimate (by approximately 3, on average) of the immersion freezing fraction of mineral dust particles for CSU CFDC data processed at an RHw of 105% vs. maximum fractions active at higher RHw. Instrumental factors that affect activation behavior vs. RHw in CFDC instruments remain to be fully explored in future studies. Nevertheless, the use of this calibration factor is supported by comparison to ice activation data obtained for the same aerosols from Aerosol Interactions and Dynamics of the Atmosphere (AIDA) expansion chamber cloud parcel experiments. Further comparison of the new parameterization, including calibration correction, to predictions of the immersion freezing surface active site density parameterization for mineral dust particles, developed separately from AIDA experimental data alone, shows excellent agreement for data collected in a descent through a Saharan aerosol layer. These studies support the utility of laboratory measurements to obtain atmospherically relevant data on the ice nucleation properties of dust and other particle types, and suggest the suitability of considering all mineral dust as a single type of ice nucleating particle as a useful first-order approximation in numerical modeling investigations.
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A new multicomponent heterogeneous ice nucleation model and its application to Snomax bacterial particles and a Snomax–illite mineral particle mixture
Abstract. Some biological particles, such as Snomax, are very active ice nucleating particles, inducing heterogeneous freezing in supercooled water at temperatures above −15 and up to −2 °C. Despite their exceptional freezing abilities, large uncertainties remain regarding the atmospheric abundance of biological ice nucleating particles, and their contribution to atmospheric ice nucleation. It has been suggested that small biological ice nucleating macromolecules or fragments can be carried on the surfaces of dust and other atmospheric particles. This could combine the atmospheric abundance of dust particles with the ice nucleating strength of biological material to create strongly enhanced and abundant ice nucleating surfaces in the atmosphere, with significant implications for the budget and distribution of atmospheric ice nucleating particles, and their consequent effects on cloud microphysics and mixed-phase clouds. The new critical surface area g framework that was developed by Beydoun et al. (2016) is extended to produce a heterogeneous ice nucleation mixing model that can predict the freezing behavior of multicomponent particle surfaces immersed in droplets. The model successfully predicts the immersion freezing properties of droplets containing Snomax bacterial particles across a mass concentration range of 7 orders of magnitude, by treating Snomax as comprised of two distinct distributions of heterogeneous ice nucleating activity. Furthermore, the model successfully predicts the immersion freezing behavior of a low-concentration mixture of Snomax and illite mineral particles, a proxy for the biological material–dust (bio-dust) mixtures observed in atmospheric aerosols. It is shown that even at very low Snomax concentrations in the mixture, droplet freezing at higher temperatures is still determined solely by the second less active and more abundant distribution of heterogeneous ice nucleating activity of Snomax, while freezing at lower temperatures is determined solely by the heterogeneous ice nucleating activity of pure illite. This demonstrates that in this proxy system, biological ice nucleating particles do not compromise their ice nucleating activity upon mixing with dust and no new range of intermediary freezing temperatures associated with the mixture of ice nucleating particles of differing activities is produced. The study is the first to directly examine the freezing behavior of a mixture of Snomax and illite and presents the first multicomponent ice nucleation model experimentally evaluated using a wide range of ice nucleating particle concentration mixtures in droplets.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1554941
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10164339
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 22
- ISSN:
- 1680-7324
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 13545 to 13557
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13545-2017
