Automated identification of local contamination in an Arctic aerosol time series

A common challenge of Atmospheric measurements in remote environments is to identify local pollution from nearby sources. During the MOSAiC (Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate) expedition, we measured aerosol and gaseous atmospheric composition on the bow of the research vessel Polarstern in the Arctic Ocean. Our measurements were occasionally impacted by pollution from the ship exhaust, or by ongoing activities on sea-ice such as passing skidoos or use of generators. We developed an automated method to identify such pollution events. Here, we present the algorithm used to clean the aerosol dataset collected during the MOSAiC expedition

Rapid growth of organic aerosol nanoparticles over a wide tropospheric temperature range

Nucleation and growth of aerosol particles from atmospheric vapors constitutes a major source of global cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). The fraction of newly formed particles that reaches CCN sizes is highly sensitive to particle growth rates, especially for particle sizes <10 nm, where coagulation losses to larger aerosol particles are greatest. Recent results show that some oxidation products from biogenic volatile organic compounds are major contributors to particle formation and initial growth. However, whether oxidized organics contribute to particle growth over the broad span of tropospheric temperatures remains an open question, and quantitative mass balance for organic growth has yet to be demonstrated at any temperature. Here, in experiments performed under atmospheric conditions in the Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets (CLOUD) chamber at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), we show that rapid growth of organic particles occurs over the range from -25 degrees C to 25 degrees C. The lower extent of autoxidation at reduced temperatures is compensated by the decreased volatility of all oxidized molecules. This is confirmed by particle-phase composition measurements, showing enhanced uptake of relatively less oxygenated products at cold temperatures. We can reproduce the measured growth rates using an aerosol growth model based entirely on the experimentally measured gas-phase spectra of oxidized organic molecules obtained from two complementary mass spectrometers. We show that the growth rates are sensitive to particle curvature, explaining widespread atmospheric observations that particle growth rates increase in the single-digit-nanometer size range. Our results demonstrate that organic vapors can contribute to particle growth over a wide range of tropospheric temperatures from molecular cluster sizes onward.Peer reviewe