References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

1680-7324

Copernicus GmbH

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-8-4049-2008

Applicability of condensation particle counters to measure atmospheric clusters

Sipilä

¹ ⁵ Lehtipalo

¹ Kulmala

¹ Petäjä

¹ ⁶ Junninen

¹ Aalto

P. P.

¹ Manninen

H. E.

¹ Kyrö

E.-M.

¹ Asmi

¹ Riipinen

¹ Curtius

² ⁷ Kürten

³ ⁸ Borrmann

² ³ O'Dowd

C. D.

⁴

Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, Finland

Institute for Atmospheric Physics, J. Gutenberg-University Mainz, Mainz, Germany

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

School of Physics & Centre for Climate and Air Pollution Studies, Environmental Change Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

also at: Helsinki Institute of Physics, Helsinki, Finland

now at: Earth and Sun Systems Laboratory, Atmospheric Chemistry Division, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, USA

now at: Institute for Atmosphere and Environment, J. W. Goethe-University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

now at: Division of Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

25 07 2008

8 14 4049 4060

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/8/4049/2008/acp-8-4049-2008.html

The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/4049/2008/acp-8-4049-2008.pdf

This study presents an evaluation of a pulse height condensation particle counter (PH-CPC) and an expansion condensation particle counter (E-CPC) in terms of measuring ambient and laboratory-generated molecular and ion clusters. Ambient molecular cluster concentrations were measured with both instruments as they were deployed in conjunction with an ion spectrometer and other aerosol instruments in Hyytiälä, Finland at the SMEAR II station between 1 March and 30 June 2007. The observed cluster concentrations varied and ranged from some thousands to 100 000 cm<sup>−3</sup>. Both instruments showed similar (within a factor of ~5) concentrations. An average size of the detected clusters was approximately 1.8 nm. As the atmospheric measurement of sub 2-nm particles and molecular clusters is a challenging task, we conclude that most likely we were unable to detect the smallest clusters. Nevertheless, the reported concentrations are the best estimates to date for minimum cluster concentrations in a boreal forest environment.

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