© Author(s) 2006. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

• Main Authors: Mipas Antarctic, Nat Pscs, Mountain Waves, M. Höpfner, N. Larsen, R. Spang, B. P. Luo, J. Ma, S. H. Svendsen, S. D. Eckermann, B. Knudsen
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2006
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Ellsworth Mountains; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.404.8929; http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/29/58/81/PDF/acp-6-1221-2006.pdf

Abstract. Space borne infrared limb emission measurements by the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) reveal the formation of a belt of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) of nitric acid trihydrate (NAT) particles over Antarctica in mid-June 2003. By mesoscale microphysical simulations we show that this sudden onset of NAT PSCs was caused by heterogeneous nucleation on ice in the cooling phases of large-amplitude stratospheric mountain waves over the Antarctic Peninsula and the Ellsworth Mountains. MIPAS observations of PSCs before this event show no indication for the presence of NAT clouds with volume densities larger than about 0.3 µm 3 /cm 3 and radii smaller than 3 µm, but are consistent with supercooled droplets of ternary H2SO4/HNO3/H2O solution (STS). Simulations indicate that homogeneous surface nucleation rates have to be reduced by three orders of magnitude to comply with the observations. 1