ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-9-4841-2009 Size-dependent activation of aerosols into cloud droplets at a subarctic background site during the second Pallas Cloud Experiment (2nd PaCE): method development and data evaluation Anttila T. 1 Vaattovaara P. 2 Komppula M. 3 Hyvärinen A.-P. 1 Lihavainen H. 1 Kerminen V.-M. 1 Laaksonen A. 1 2 Finnish Meteorological Institute, P.O. Box 503, 00101 Helsinki, Finland Department of Physics, University of Kuopio, P.O. Box 1672, 70211 Kuopio, Finland Finnish Meteorological Institute, Kuopio Unit, P.O. Box 1627, 70211 Kuopio, Finland 22 07 2009 9 14 4841 4854 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/9/4841/2009/acp-9-4841-2009.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/4841/2009/acp-9-4841-2009.pdf

In situ measurements of aerosol water uptake and activation of aerosols into cloud droplets provide information on how aerosols influence the microphysical properties of clouds. Here we present a computational scheme that can be used in connection with such measurements to assess the influence of the particle hygroscopicity and mixing state (in terms of the water uptake) on the cloud nucleating ability of particles. Additionally, it provides an estimate for the peak supersaturation of water vapour reached during the formation of the observed cloud(s). The method was applied in interpreting results of a measurement campaign that focused on aerosol-cloud interactions taking place at a subarctic background site located in Northern Finland (second Pallas Cloud Experiment, 2nd PaCE). A set of case studies was conducted, and the observed activation behavior could be successfully explained by a maximum supersaturation that varied between 0.18 and 0.26% depending on the case. In these cases, the diameter corresponding to the activated fraction of 50% was in the range of 110–140 nm, and the particles were only moderately water soluble with hygroscopic growth factors varying between 1.1 and 1.4. The conducted analysis showed that the activated fractions and the total number of particles acting as CCN are expected to be highly sensitive to the particle hygroscopic growth properties. For example, the latter quantity varied over a factor between 1.8 and 3.1, depending on the case, when the mean hygroscopic growth factors were varied by 10%. Another important conclusion is that size-dependent activation profiles carries information on the mixing state of particles.

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