Effects of 20–100 nm particles on liquid clouds in the clean summertime Arctic

• Published in: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
• Main Authors: Leaitch, W. Richard, Korolev, Alexei, Aliabadi, Amir A., Burkart, Julia, Willis, Megan D., Abbatt, Jonathan P.D., Bozem, Heiko, Hoor, Peter M., Köllner, Franziska, Schneider, Johannes, Herber, Andreas, Konrad, Christian, Brauner, Ralf
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2016
• Subjects: albedo; Arctic; Nunavut; Resolute Bay
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/41677/; https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/41677/1/acp-16-11107-2016-Leaitch.pdf; http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/11107/2016/; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.48531; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.48531.d001

Observations addressing effects of aerosol par- ticles on summertime Arctic clouds are limited. An air- borne study, carried out during July 2014 from Resolute Bay, Nunavut, Canada, as part of the Canadian NETCARE project, provides a comprehensive in situ look into some effects of aerosol particles on liquid clouds in the clean environment of the Arctic summer. Median cloud droplet number concentrations (CDNC) from 62 cloud samples are 10 cm−3 for low-altitude cloud (clouds topped below 200 m) and 101 cm−3 for higher-altitude cloud (clouds based above 200m). The lower activation size of aerosol particles is ≤50nm diameter in about 40% of the cases. Particles as small as 20 nm activated in the higher-altitude clouds consis- tent with higher supersaturations (S) for those clouds inferred from comparison of the CDNC with cloud condensation nu- cleus (CCN) measurements. Over 60 % of the low-altitude cloud samples fall into the CCN-limited regime of Mauritsen et al. (2011), within which increases in CDNC may increase liquid water and warm the surface. These first observations of that CCN-limited regime indicate a positive association of the liquid water content (LWC) and CDNC, but no associ- ation of either the CDNC or LWC with aerosol variations. Above the Mauritsen limit, where aerosol indirect cooling may result, changes in particles with diameters from 20 to 100nm exert a relatively strong influence on the CDNC. Within this exceedingly clean environment, as defined by low carbon monoxide and low concentrations of larger parti- cles, the background CDNC are estimated to range between 16 and 160 cm−3, where higher values are due to activation of particles ≤ 50 nm that likely derive from natural sources. These observations offer the first wide-ranging reference for the aerosol cloud albedo effect in the summertime Arctic.