Physicochemical Analysis and Ice Nucleation Potential of Particles from a Tropical Terrestrial Biosphere Impacted by Anthropogenic Emissions
EMSL Project ID
48794
Abstract
The Amazonian region has been documented to be a source of a wide range of aerosol particle types including biogenic secondary organic aerosol (SOA) and salts, primary biological aerosol particles, biomass burning aerosol (BBA) representing the strongest anthropogenic influence in addition to sea spray aerosol and African dust and BBA advecting from outside into the region. In addition, the presence of anthropogenic emissions by industries and transportation in the large city of Manaus, impacts the composition, mixing state, and phase state of particles, and, thus, changes the nature of the ambient aerosol population. These particles reflect a broad diversity of physicochemical properties. How these particle types impact ice nucleation and ice crystal formation in clouds is not well known. The ice nucleating particles (INPs), which play a crucial role in the precipitation process and radiative properties of mixed-phase and ice clouds, originate from this complex ambient aerosol population. Molecular-level, comprehensive chemical and physical characterization of individual particles to yield a statistically significant representation of the total aerosol population and of individual INPs will be performed using an array of complementary chemical imaging techniques available at EMSL/PNNL and ALS/LBNL with the goal of determining the internal heterogeneity and morphology of discrete particles. This will allow the unambiguous determination of the most active INPs and their relation to the ambient aerosol population. The acquired data will yield insight in chemical composition, mixing state, and sources of aerosols in a remote, biological active region, periodically impacted by anthropogenic emissions altering aerosol properties, necessary information for improved aerosol chemistry representation in atmospheric models. Furthermore, the identification of the most active INPs will allow assessment which of the various aerosol systems present needs to be considered in cold cloud formation processes in cloud-resolving models. The proposed research activities on the physicochemical particle properties and cloud formation via ice nucleation by biogenic aerosols directly address DOE BER's mission to advance our understanding of the roles of Earth’s biogeochemical systems in determining future climate changes and the EMSL Science Theme “Atmospheric Aerosol Systems (AAS)” that focuses on molecular scale understanding of atmospheric aerosols that will improve the representation of aerosols in atmospheric chemistry and emissions components of Earth system models.
Project Details
Project type
Large-Scale EMSL Research
Start Date
2015-10-01
End Date
2017-09-30
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Co-Investigator(s)
Team Members
Related Publications
Wang B, DA Knopf, S China, BW Arey, T Harder, MK Gilles, and A Laskin. 2016. "Direct observation of ice nucleation events on individual atmospheric particles." Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. PCCP 18(43):29721-29731. doi:10.1039/c6cp05253c