Simulation of particle size distribution with a global aerosol model: contribution of nucleation to aerosol and CCN number concentrations

By Fangqun Yu, G. Luo. 2009

424 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract. An advanced particle microphysics model with a number of computationally efficient schemes has been incorporated into a global chemistry transport model (GEOS-Chem) to simulate particle number size distributions and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) concentrations in the atmosphere. Size-resolved microphysics for secondary particles (i.e., those formed from gaseous species) and sea salt has been treated in the present study. The growth of nucleated particles through the condensation of sulfuric acid vapor and equilibrium uptake of nitrate, ammonium, and secondary organic aerosol is explicitly simulated, along with the scavenging of secondary particles by primary particles (dust, black carbon, organic carbon, and sea salt). We calculate secondary particle formation rate based on ion-mediated nucleation (IMN) mechanism and constrain the parameterizations of primary particle emissions with various observations. Our simulations indicate that secondary particles formed via IMN appear to be able to account for the particle number concentrations observed in many parts of the troposphere. A comparison of the simulated annual mean concentrations of condensation nuclei larger than 10 nm (CN10) with those measured values show very good agreement (within a factor of two) in near all 22 sites around the globe that have at least one full year of CN10 measurements. Secondary particles appear to dominate the number abundance in most parts of the troposphere. Calculated CCN concentration at supersaturation of 0.4% (CCN0.4) and the fraction of CCN0.4 that is secondary (fsecCCN) have large spatial variations. Over the middle latitude in the Northern Hemisphere, zonally averaged CCN0.4 decreases from ~400–700 cm−3 in the boundary layer (BL) to below 100 cm−3 above altitude of ~4 km, the corresponding fsecCCN values change from 50–60% to above ~70%. In the Southern Hemisphere, the zonally averaged CCN0.4 is below 200 cm−3 and fsecCCN is generally above 60% except in the BL over the Southern Ocean.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/90bbc2f2ce67b5559598b4eb2f6d01c446797231

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Citations in the corpus

Aerosol nucleation and its role for clouds and Earth's radiative forcing in the aerosol-climate model ECHAM5-HAM (2010, background): “Yu and Luo(2009) assessed that nucleation from the gas phase contributes to aerosol concentrations in excess of 80% in most parts of the troposphere, andMerikanto et al. (2009) estimated that 45% of global low-level cloud cloud condensation nuclei are derived from aerosol nucleation.”
Processes Controlling the Seasonal Cycle of Arctic Aerosol Number and Size Distributions (2015, neutral): “However, many present-day global models neglect this process, including previous versions of GEOS-Chem-TOMAS (D’Andrea et al., 2013; Pierce et al., 2013; Trivitayanurak et al., 2008), GISS-TOMAS (Adams and Seinfeld, 2002; Pierce and Adams,20 2009), GLOMAP (Spracklen et al., 2005a, b; 2008; Mann et a”
JournalofGeophysicalResearch : Atmospheres Causes and importance of new particle formation in the present-day and preindustrial atmospheres (2017, neutral): “New particle formation (NPF) is well established as the source of around half of cloud-forming particles in the present-day atmosphere [Merikanto et al., 2009; Wang and Penner, 2009; Yu and Luo, 2009; Pierce and Adams, 2009a].”
Cloud condensation nuclei production associated with atmospheric nucleation: a synthesis based on existing literature and new results (2012, background): “Model investigations have demonstrated nucleation to be an important source of CCN in the global atmosphere (Spracklen et al., 2008a; Merikanto et al., 2009; Yu and Luo, 2009; Kazil et al., 2010; Luo and Yu, 2011a).”
Ion‐mediated nucleation in the atmosphere: Key controlling parameters, implications, and look‐up table (2010, methodology): “The IMN look-up table has been successfully incorporated into a global 457 chemical transport model [Yu et al., 2008; Yu and Luo, 2009] and the nucleation rate calculation 458 has a very small effect on the overall global simulation computing time.”