ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-11-7171-2011 Aerosol nucleation spikes in the planetary boundary layer Chen J.-P. 1 Tsai T.-S. 1 Liu S.-C. 1 2 Department of Atmospheric Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taiwan Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taiwan 21 07 2011 11 14 7171 7184 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.net/11/7171/2011/acp-11-7171-2011.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/7171/2011/acp-11-7171-2011.pdf

Photochemically driven nucleation bursts, which typically occur within a few hours after sunrise, often produce strong aerosol number concentration (ANC) fluctuations. The causes of such ANC spikes were investigated using a detailed aerosol model running in the parcel mode. Two potential mechanisms for the ANC spikes were proposed and simulated. The blocking of actinic flux by scattered clouds can significantly influence new particle production, but this does not cause strong fluctuations in the number of aerosols within sizes greater than the detection limit of our measurements. A more plausible mechanism is the turbulence eddy effect. Strong aerosol nucleation may occur in both updrafts and downdrafts, while the cloud formation at the boundary layer top strongly reduces the number of aerosols. As the number of aerosols is sensitive to turbulence eddy and cloud formation properties, a changing turbulence condition would result in large fluctuations in the evolution of ANC similar to that observed at the surface.

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