References

ACPD

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions

ACPD

1680-7375

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acpd-10-29853-2010

Water uptake of biomass burning aerosol at sub- and supersaturated conditions: closure studies and implications for the role of organics

Dusek

¹ ³ Frank

G. P.

¹ ⁸ Massling

² ⁵ Zeromskiene

² ⁷ Iinuma

² Schmid

¹ ⁴ Helas

¹ Hennig

² ⁶ Wiedensohler

² Andreae

M. O.

Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Biogeochemistry Department, Mainz, Germany

Leibnitz-Institute for Tropospheric Research, Leipzig, Germany

now at: Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

now at: Comprehensive Pneumology Center, Institute of Lung Biology and Disease, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany

now at: National Environmental Research Institute, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark

now at: Department for Applied Environmental Science (ITM), Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

now at: Dillon Consulting Ltd., Toronto, Canada

now at: Department of Physics, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

07 12 2010

10 12 29853 29895

This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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We investigate the CCN activity of freshly emitted biomass burning particles and their hygroscopic growth at a relative humidity (RH) of 85%. The particles were produced in the Mainz combustion laboratory by controlled burning of various wood types, peat and grass. The water uptake at sub- and supersaturations is parameterized by deriving a soluble volume fraction (ε). It is defined as the volume fraction of ammonium sulfate in the total aerosol material, which would be sufficient to explain the observed water uptake. For the wood burns, soluble volume fractions are low, generally around 0.11. This translates to a hygroscopicity parameter κ (another widely used parameterization; cf. Petters and Kreidenweis, 2007) of around 0.07. The main emphasis of this study is a comparison of ε derived from measurements at sub- and supersaturated conditions εG and εCCN), in order to see whether the water uptake at 85% RH can predict the CCN properties of the biomass burning particles. Differences in εG and εCCN can arise through solution non-idealities, the presence of slightly soluble or surface active compounds, or non-spherical particle shape. We find that εG and εCCN agree within experimental uncertainties (of around 30%) for particle sizes of 100 and 150 nm; only for 50 nm particles is εCCN larger than εG by a factor of 2. The magnitude of this difference and its dependence on particle size is consistent with the presence of surface active organic compounds. These compounds mainly facilitate the CCN activation of small particles, which form the most concentrated solution droplets at the point of activation. The 50 nm particles, however, are only activated at supersaturations higher than 1% and are therefore of minor importance as CCN in ambient clouds. By comparison with the actual chemical composition of the biomass burning particles, we estimate that the hygroscopicity of the organic fraction is roughly 1/3 that of ammonium sulfate and can be represented by κ = 0.15–0.2.

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