the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
New particle formation leads to enhanced cloud condensation nuclei concentrations at Antarctic Peninsula
Jiyeon Park
Hyojin Kang
Yeontae Gim
Eunho Jang
Ki-Tae Park
Sangjong Park
Chang Hoon Jung
Darius Ceburnis
Colin O'Dowd
Young Jun Yoon
Abstract. Few studies have investigated the impact of new particle formation (NPF) on cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in remote Antarctica, and none has elucidated the relationship between NPF and CCN production. To address that knowledge gap, we continuously measured the number size distribution of 2.5–300 nm particles and CCN number concentrations at King Sejong Station in the Antarctic Peninsula from January 1 to December 31, 2018. Ninety-seven new particle formation (NPF) events were detected throughout the year. The estimated median spatial scale of NPF around Antarctic peninsula was found to be approximately 155 km, indicating the large-scale of NPF events. Air back-trajectory analysis revealed that 80 cases of NPF events were associated with air masses originating over the ocean, followed by sea ice (12 cases), multiple (3 cases), and land (2 cases) regions. We present and discuss three major NPF categories: (1) marine NPF (2) sea ice NPF, and (3) multiple NPF. Our results showed that the photo-oxidation of oceanic biogenic precursors such as dimethyl sulfide (DMS) could be a key component in marine NPF events, whereas halogen compounds released from ice-covered areas could contribute to sea-ice NPF events. Terrestrial sources (wild life colonies, vegetation, and meltwater ponds) from Antarctica could affect aerosol production in multiple air masses. Out of 97 observed NPF events, 83 cases were characterized by the simultaneous increase in the CCN concentration by 2–270 % (median 44 %) in the following 1 to 36 hours (median 8 hours) after NPF events. Overall, Antarctic NPF events were found to be a significant source of particles with different physical characteristics and related to biogenic sources in and around the Antarctic Peninsula, which subsequently grew to cloud nuclei.
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Interactive discussion
Status: closed
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-707', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 May 2023
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-707/egusphere-2023-707-RC1-supplement.pdf
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Young Jun Yoon, 25 Jul 2023
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-707', Anonymous Referee #2, 28 May 2023
The paper "new particle formation leads to CCN at the Antarctic Peninsula" aim to present one year of data (2018) of SMPS data and to connect it with CCN data.
I am not sure if there is a contribution at this stage. Similar and much in depth results were published from Jang et al 2019 and Kim et al 2019 on part A part B of ACP. This paper stresses the importance of the ocean, but the air mass classification and the SMPS data analysis is too weak to draw any further conclusion, I am not sure if this paper add anything new to the literature for a high impact journal like ACP.
The paper also suffers from a poor literature review, totally unbalanced - it somehow reminds controversial marine organic aerosol topics discussed twenty years ago, with few respected scientists arguing over POC-DOC and the effect of organics on the sea spray production (still not solved!).
(1) Introduction - poorly presented, it cites one paper (Kyro et al 2013) stressing the importance of Antarctic melt ponds waters, purely speculative and not shown in any data, only suggested as a possibility - remote, I would say; if you have an idea of the overall geography of the Antarctic continent and marine surrounding. The paper continue to report papers about animals and emissions, although from studies run very close to emission sources (indeed the island is called Bird island).
What is even funnier is that the authors do not mention any of recent open ocean and coastal Antarctic expeditions (i.e. PEGASO, ACE Schmale Baccarini et al, PI-ICE) - that is funny, cause some of the authors were even on board of such cruises (and continue publishing data - without the PIs involved - from such cruises). Overall it is a pity in 2023 these things are still happening - I suggest to write a better and more fair introduction. Also, recent papers published by Australian groups talking about Antarctica and CCN may be worth mentioning and consider in the discussion. At this stage the paper is about a report of measurements.
(2) BC data. Not sure if this is all necessary - if you want to compare other data, consider to compare Antarctic station or Arctic station, mentioning Mace Head is a "little" bit out of scope here. It is evident that marine Atlantic aerosols has nothing to do with Antarctic - consider remove all this section for eventually a future publication elsewhere.
(3) Definition of different events - beside the dozens of papers discussing different types of nucleation with K-means clustering, do not you have better examples than the ones presented? Out of the 97 NPF events, you may want to have a look at what you presented:
Figure 6 - is this a NPF event or did you by mistake add a wrong figure? Given you comment it in the text, I assume this is the right figure. I am not sure this is a NPF event, it looks to me it is a background mode of about 20nm that is existing in a large area, it reminds what was discussed in O´Dowd et al (GRL, 2010) and in other papers of open ocean slow growing ultrafine particles. What I am not sure is that if there particles are growing in Figure 6, it looks to me they stay there, and they were detected as a background small Aikten (20-30nm) mode - could be primary or secondary or something interesting, surely not a "tyipcal" NPF for a marine case I would say.
Figure 7 The second may be a NPF event, the first one is a little bit a burst, of 30 min, followed by a 20-30nm mode lasting for several hours - I suggest to look for better examples or to use a more detailed classication
Figure 8 are these data in local time? Please define the time, it looks this is a night time nucleation event?
(4) classification of air masses. Please consider to discuss different types of environment and to discuss it well, especially cause there are marine simpagic and pelagic zones, including the consolidated pack sea ice and the sea ice marginal zone. All these environments are more complex than a simple ocean - sea ice area. I suggest a better analysis, perhaps using a clustering method such us the one presented in Jang 2022 (Science of the Total Environment 803 (2022) 150002). The study of Jang et al 2022 also stress that EAP and WAP are main sources of ultrafine particles (10-25nm) so in contrast to what this current study suggests.
The current paper aims to give a clear message: it is all marine open ocean and little sea ice. This is in contrast with the literature, and recent studies (Jang 2022). Unfortunately the previous studies, Jang 2019 part 1 and part 2 did not consider sea ice air masses, and only partially presented data showing only data from open ocean seas from the north. I suggest a more in depth analysis, at the moment this is a qualitative analysis showing some very broad classifications of both air masses and NPF events with a broad terminology - broadly concluding the identical results published before from a much bigger dataset (2009 till 2016) with both SMPS and CCN data.
(5) Wind roses or potential source function analysis to prove and or exclude local sources as suggested by reviewer 1.
I suggest to publish this paper in a lower impact journal or in measurement report.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-707-RC2 - AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Young Jun Yoon, 25 Jul 2023
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CC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-707', Wolfgang Junkermann, 11 Jun 2023
Interesting paper, the authors present data about ultrafine particles from the Antarctic peninsula respectively the South Shetland Islands. There and at the tip of the peninsula at Grahamland, several of the Antarctic research stations are located, an on the first glance good location to investigate extremely clean air.
The authors present ultrafine particle measurements in the size range of about 8-10 nm, the threshold for nanoparticles typically for nucleation, to about 30 - 60 nm and claim that these particles contribute significantly to cloud condensation nuclei. This statement concerning CCN is well accepted and important for the local meteorology and climate.
However, the attribution of the observed particles to new particle formation (NPF), respectively gas to particle conversion from natural particle precursors is not supported by the data presented. Gas to particle conversion from biogenic emissions and DMS related sulphur compounds first leads to particles in the nucleation mode below 10 nm and growth to the measured sizes would need several hours (Kulmala et al, 2013). Such particles were not observed although the instrumentation used was specially included to investigate the particle nucleation size range down to 2.5 nm, an observation that is even stated by the authors. The particles were, accordingly, most likely produced elsewhere and advected to the site, as also stated in the text. Where and by which process are the particles produced?The authors present a hypothesis about a potential production process and source location. Such a localized process only in a limited geographic location upwind and is, however, not supported by corresponding data on the regional distribution of nucleation precursors.
The size distributions shown are well in agreement with known anthropogenic emissions. Fossil fuel generators are used at all the Antarctic stations, see also the section in the manuscript about the sector which might be polluted by the own power generation. There are several stations about 20 km and several others within ~ 150 km upwind. The plumes of these research station generators may not be strong enough to produce a measureable signal at neighboring stations, however, they contribute to background levels depending on wind direction and also point towards another and likely stronger anthropogenic source, which appears from time to time at the same locations, in direct vicinity of the research stations in austral summer, always for a couple of days.
Such a source for ultrafine particles are the supply vessels providing support for the stations (Hobbs et al, 2000, Kivekäs et al, 2014, Junkermann and Hacker, 2022). Their plumes are under selected cloud patterns visible from satellite for distances of more than 100 km especially in an otherwise extreme clean environment (Twomey, 1977, Rosenfeld, 2000). Definitely, ships, which produce a much stronger emission than a mid-size research station generator have no fixed location. However, their position, type and size is readily available from AIS marine traffic repository. The vessels normally stay even for a couple of days close to the research stations. Alternatively, also larger commercial cruise vessels appear increasingly in the area. They move slowly or stay locally for several hours to enable tourist excursions. Pictures in Google Earth document all these anthropogenic activities in the area. Also, these vessels are traceable via AIS.The paper thus indicates a different problem, the pollution of the Antarctic environment by increasing anthropogenic shipping activities on top of unavoidable research station supply. However, the obvious anthropogenic pollution in this pristine location is not discussed in the manuscript.
Literature:
Twomey, S. The influence of pollution on the shortwave albedo of clouds, J. Atmos. Sci., 34, 1149–1152 (1977)
Rosenfeld D., Suppression of Rain and Snow by Urban and Industrial Air Pollution, Science, 287, 1793 (2000)
Hobbs, P. V., et al. Emissions from Ships with respect to their Effects on Clouds, J. Atmos. Sci., 57 2570-2590 (2000)
Kulmala, M., et al. Direct observations of atmospheric aerosol nucleation, Science, 339, 943–946, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1227385, (2013).
Kivekäs, N. et al,: Contribution of ship traffic to aerosol particle concentrations downwind of a major shipping lane, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 8255–8267, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8255-2014, (2014)
Junkermann, W. & Hacker, J., Unprecedented levels of ultrafine particles, major sources, and the hydrological cycle, Nature Scientific Reports, 12:7410 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11500-5, (2022)Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-707-CC1 - AC3: 'Reply on CC1', Young Jun Yoon, 25 Jul 2023
Interactive discussion
Status: closed
-
RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-707', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 May 2023
The comment was uploaded in the form of a supplement: https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-707/egusphere-2023-707-RC1-supplement.pdf
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Young Jun Yoon, 25 Jul 2023
-
RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-707', Anonymous Referee #2, 28 May 2023
The paper "new particle formation leads to CCN at the Antarctic Peninsula" aim to present one year of data (2018) of SMPS data and to connect it with CCN data.
I am not sure if there is a contribution at this stage. Similar and much in depth results were published from Jang et al 2019 and Kim et al 2019 on part A part B of ACP. This paper stresses the importance of the ocean, but the air mass classification and the SMPS data analysis is too weak to draw any further conclusion, I am not sure if this paper add anything new to the literature for a high impact journal like ACP.
The paper also suffers from a poor literature review, totally unbalanced - it somehow reminds controversial marine organic aerosol topics discussed twenty years ago, with few respected scientists arguing over POC-DOC and the effect of organics on the sea spray production (still not solved!).
(1) Introduction - poorly presented, it cites one paper (Kyro et al 2013) stressing the importance of Antarctic melt ponds waters, purely speculative and not shown in any data, only suggested as a possibility - remote, I would say; if you have an idea of the overall geography of the Antarctic continent and marine surrounding. The paper continue to report papers about animals and emissions, although from studies run very close to emission sources (indeed the island is called Bird island).
What is even funnier is that the authors do not mention any of recent open ocean and coastal Antarctic expeditions (i.e. PEGASO, ACE Schmale Baccarini et al, PI-ICE) - that is funny, cause some of the authors were even on board of such cruises (and continue publishing data - without the PIs involved - from such cruises). Overall it is a pity in 2023 these things are still happening - I suggest to write a better and more fair introduction. Also, recent papers published by Australian groups talking about Antarctica and CCN may be worth mentioning and consider in the discussion. At this stage the paper is about a report of measurements.
(2) BC data. Not sure if this is all necessary - if you want to compare other data, consider to compare Antarctic station or Arctic station, mentioning Mace Head is a "little" bit out of scope here. It is evident that marine Atlantic aerosols has nothing to do with Antarctic - consider remove all this section for eventually a future publication elsewhere.
(3) Definition of different events - beside the dozens of papers discussing different types of nucleation with K-means clustering, do not you have better examples than the ones presented? Out of the 97 NPF events, you may want to have a look at what you presented:
Figure 6 - is this a NPF event or did you by mistake add a wrong figure? Given you comment it in the text, I assume this is the right figure. I am not sure this is a NPF event, it looks to me it is a background mode of about 20nm that is existing in a large area, it reminds what was discussed in O´Dowd et al (GRL, 2010) and in other papers of open ocean slow growing ultrafine particles. What I am not sure is that if there particles are growing in Figure 6, it looks to me they stay there, and they were detected as a background small Aikten (20-30nm) mode - could be primary or secondary or something interesting, surely not a "tyipcal" NPF for a marine case I would say.
Figure 7 The second may be a NPF event, the first one is a little bit a burst, of 30 min, followed by a 20-30nm mode lasting for several hours - I suggest to look for better examples or to use a more detailed classication
Figure 8 are these data in local time? Please define the time, it looks this is a night time nucleation event?
(4) classification of air masses. Please consider to discuss different types of environment and to discuss it well, especially cause there are marine simpagic and pelagic zones, including the consolidated pack sea ice and the sea ice marginal zone. All these environments are more complex than a simple ocean - sea ice area. I suggest a better analysis, perhaps using a clustering method such us the one presented in Jang 2022 (Science of the Total Environment 803 (2022) 150002). The study of Jang et al 2022 also stress that EAP and WAP are main sources of ultrafine particles (10-25nm) so in contrast to what this current study suggests.
The current paper aims to give a clear message: it is all marine open ocean and little sea ice. This is in contrast with the literature, and recent studies (Jang 2022). Unfortunately the previous studies, Jang 2019 part 1 and part 2 did not consider sea ice air masses, and only partially presented data showing only data from open ocean seas from the north. I suggest a more in depth analysis, at the moment this is a qualitative analysis showing some very broad classifications of both air masses and NPF events with a broad terminology - broadly concluding the identical results published before from a much bigger dataset (2009 till 2016) with both SMPS and CCN data.
(5) Wind roses or potential source function analysis to prove and or exclude local sources as suggested by reviewer 1.
I suggest to publish this paper in a lower impact journal or in measurement report.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-707-RC2 - AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Young Jun Yoon, 25 Jul 2023
-
CC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2023-707', Wolfgang Junkermann, 11 Jun 2023
Interesting paper, the authors present data about ultrafine particles from the Antarctic peninsula respectively the South Shetland Islands. There and at the tip of the peninsula at Grahamland, several of the Antarctic research stations are located, an on the first glance good location to investigate extremely clean air.
The authors present ultrafine particle measurements in the size range of about 8-10 nm, the threshold for nanoparticles typically for nucleation, to about 30 - 60 nm and claim that these particles contribute significantly to cloud condensation nuclei. This statement concerning CCN is well accepted and important for the local meteorology and climate.
However, the attribution of the observed particles to new particle formation (NPF), respectively gas to particle conversion from natural particle precursors is not supported by the data presented. Gas to particle conversion from biogenic emissions and DMS related sulphur compounds first leads to particles in the nucleation mode below 10 nm and growth to the measured sizes would need several hours (Kulmala et al, 2013). Such particles were not observed although the instrumentation used was specially included to investigate the particle nucleation size range down to 2.5 nm, an observation that is even stated by the authors. The particles were, accordingly, most likely produced elsewhere and advected to the site, as also stated in the text. Where and by which process are the particles produced?The authors present a hypothesis about a potential production process and source location. Such a localized process only in a limited geographic location upwind and is, however, not supported by corresponding data on the regional distribution of nucleation precursors.
The size distributions shown are well in agreement with known anthropogenic emissions. Fossil fuel generators are used at all the Antarctic stations, see also the section in the manuscript about the sector which might be polluted by the own power generation. There are several stations about 20 km and several others within ~ 150 km upwind. The plumes of these research station generators may not be strong enough to produce a measureable signal at neighboring stations, however, they contribute to background levels depending on wind direction and also point towards another and likely stronger anthropogenic source, which appears from time to time at the same locations, in direct vicinity of the research stations in austral summer, always for a couple of days.
Such a source for ultrafine particles are the supply vessels providing support for the stations (Hobbs et al, 2000, Kivekäs et al, 2014, Junkermann and Hacker, 2022). Their plumes are under selected cloud patterns visible from satellite for distances of more than 100 km especially in an otherwise extreme clean environment (Twomey, 1977, Rosenfeld, 2000). Definitely, ships, which produce a much stronger emission than a mid-size research station generator have no fixed location. However, their position, type and size is readily available from AIS marine traffic repository. The vessels normally stay even for a couple of days close to the research stations. Alternatively, also larger commercial cruise vessels appear increasingly in the area. They move slowly or stay locally for several hours to enable tourist excursions. Pictures in Google Earth document all these anthropogenic activities in the area. Also, these vessels are traceable via AIS.The paper thus indicates a different problem, the pollution of the Antarctic environment by increasing anthropogenic shipping activities on top of unavoidable research station supply. However, the obvious anthropogenic pollution in this pristine location is not discussed in the manuscript.
Literature:
Twomey, S. The influence of pollution on the shortwave albedo of clouds, J. Atmos. Sci., 34, 1149–1152 (1977)
Rosenfeld D., Suppression of Rain and Snow by Urban and Industrial Air Pollution, Science, 287, 1793 (2000)
Hobbs, P. V., et al. Emissions from Ships with respect to their Effects on Clouds, J. Atmos. Sci., 57 2570-2590 (2000)
Kulmala, M., et al. Direct observations of atmospheric aerosol nucleation, Science, 339, 943–946, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1227385, (2013).
Kivekäs, N. et al,: Contribution of ship traffic to aerosol particle concentrations downwind of a major shipping lane, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 8255–8267, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-8255-2014, (2014)
Junkermann, W. & Hacker, J., Unprecedented levels of ultrafine particles, major sources, and the hydrological cycle, Nature Scientific Reports, 12:7410 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-11500-5, (2022)Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-707-CC1 - AC3: 'Reply on CC1', Young Jun Yoon, 25 Jul 2023
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The requested preprint has a corresponding peer-reviewed final revised paper. You are encouraged to refer to the final revised version.
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