ACPD Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ACPD 1680-7375 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acpd-8-14497-2008 Thermodynamics of homogeneous nucleation of ice particles in the polar summer mesosphere Zasetsky A. Y. 1 Petelina S. V. 2 3 Svishchev I. M. 1 Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia formerly at: the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada 30 07 2008 8 4 14497 14517 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. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/8/14497/2008/acpd-8-14497-2008.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/8/14497/2008/acpd-8-14497-2008.pdf

We present the hypothesis of homogeneous nucleation of ice nano-particles in the polar summer mesosphere. The nucleation of condensed phase is traced back to the first step on the formation pathway, which is assumed to be the transition of water vapor to amorphous cluster. Amorphous clusters then freeze into water ice, likely metastable cubic ice, when they reach the critical size. The estimates based on the equilibrium thermodynamics give the critical size (radius) of amorphous water clusters as about 1.0 nm. The same estimates for the final transition step, that is the transformation of cubic to hexagonal ice, give the critical size of about 15 nm at typical upper mesospheric conditions during the polar summer (temperature <i>T</i>=150 K, water vapor density &rho;<sub>vapor</sub>=10<sup>9</sup> cm<sup>&minus;3</sup>).

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