Evidence for the role of organics in aerosol particle formation under atmospheric conditions

New particle formation in the atmosphere is an important parameter in governing the radiative forcing of atmospheric aerosols. However, detailed nucleation mechanisms remain ambiguous, as laboratory data have so far not been successful in explaining atmospheric nucleation. We investigated the formation of new particles in a smog chamber simulating the photochemical formation of H2SO4 and organic condensable species. Nucleation occurs at H2SO4 concentrations similar to those found in the ambient atmosphere during nucleation events. The measured particle formation rates are proportional to the product of the concentrations of H2SO4 and an organic molecule. This suggests that only one H2SO4 molecule and one organic molecule are involved in the rate-limiting step of the observed nucleation process. Parameterizing this process in a global aerosol model results in substantially better agreement with ambient observations compared to control runs.

Keywords

Subject (DDC)

550 - Geowissenschaften

Project

Event

Exhibition start date

Exhibition end date

Conference start date

Conference end date

Date of the last check

ISBN

ISSN

1091-6490
0027-8424

Language

English

Created during FHNW affiliation

No

Strategic action fields FHNW

Publication status

Published

Review

Peer review of the complete publication

Open access category

Closed

License

Citation

Metzger, A., Verheggen, B., Dommen, J., Duplissy, J., Prévôt, A. S. H., Weingartner, E., Riipinen, I., Kulmala, M., Spracklen, D. V., Carslaw, K. S., & Baltensperger, U. (2010). Evidence for the role of organics in aerosol particle formation under atmospheric conditions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(15), 6646–6651. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0911330107

Full item page