Article

Abstract

• A wealth of recent laboratory and field experiments demonstrate that organic aerosol composition evolves with time in the atmosphere, leading to changes in the influence of the organic fraction to cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) spectra. There is a need for tools that can realistically represent the evolution of CCN activity to better predict indirect effects of organic aerosol on clouds and climate. This work describes a model to predict the CCN activity of organic compounds from functional group composition. Following previous methods in the literature, we test the ability of semi-empirical group contribution methods in Kohler theory to predict the effective hygroscopicity parameter, kappa. However, in our approach we also account for liquid-liquid phase boundaries to simulate phase-limited activation behavior. Model evaluation against a selected database of published laboratory measurements demonstrates that kappa can be predicted within a factor of 2. Simulation of homologous series is used to identify the relative effectiveness of different functional groups in increasing the CCN activity of weakly functionalized organic compounds. Hydroxyl, carboxyl, aldehyde, hydroperoxide, carbonyl, and ether moieties promote CCN activity while methylene and nitrate moieties inhibit CCN activity. The model can be incorporated into scale-bridging test beds such as the Generator of Explicit Chemistry and Kinetics of Organics in the Atmosphere (GECKO-A) to evaluate the evolution of kappa for a complex mix of organic compounds and to develop suitable parameterizations of CCN evolution for larger-scale models.

Creator

• Ziemann, P.J.
• Kreidenweis, S. M.
• Petters, M.D.

Date Issued

• 2016-01-19

Academic Affiliation

• Chemical and Biological Engineering

Journal Title

• Geoscientific Model Development

Journal Issue/Number

• 1

Journal Volume

• 9

Última modificación

• 2019-12-05

Resource Type

• Article

Declaración de derechos

• In Copyright

DOI

•  http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/gmd-9-111-2016

ISSN

• 1991-9603

Language

• English [eng]

Relaciones

Elementos

Miniatura	Título	Fecha de subida	Visibilidad	Acciones
	predictionOfCloudCondensationNucleiActivityForOrganicComp.pdf	2019-12-05	Público	Descargar