Marine and terrestrial influences on ice nucleating particles during continuous springtime measurements in an Arctic oilfield location

Creamean, Jessie M.; Kirpes, Rachel M.; Pratt, Kerri A.; Spada, Nicholas J.; Maahn, Maximilian; de Boer, Gijs; Schnell, Russell C.; China, Swarup

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-18023-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 24

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-18023-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-18-18023-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 24

Research article

|

18 Dec 2018

Research article |

| 18 Dec 2018

Marine and terrestrial influences on ice nucleating particles during continuous springtime measurements in an Arctic oilfield location

Jessie M. Creamean, Rachel M. Kirpes, Kerri A. Pratt, Nicholas J. Spada, Maximilian Maahn, Gijs de Boer, Russell C. Schnell, and Swarup China

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Final revised paper (published on 18 Dec 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 18 Jun 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'REVIEW', Anonymous Referee #1, 20 Jul 2018
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer 1', Jessie Creamean, 10 Oct 2018
RC2: 'Review_acp-2018-545', Anonymous Referee #2, 31 Jul 2018
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer 2', Jessie Creamean, 10 Oct 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Jessie Creamean on behalf of the Authors (10 Oct 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Oct 2018) by Ryan Sullivan

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (09 Nov 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Second review of “marine and terrestrial influences on ice nucleating particles during ….” By Creamean et al.

I thank the referees for carefully addressing my initial comments. The paper is significantly improved. However, I still have comments that need to be addressed before publication in ACP.

1) Page 6, line 16. The authors state that sufficient aerosol loading is re-suspended during the extraction process. I certainly agree with this, but this does not rule out artifacts. The fraction of material re-suspended may depend on the overall loading, which could lead to artifacts. This should be acknowledged.

2) Figure 3. Please label each panel with the correct stage name and size cut. I could not tell what panel corresponds to Stage A – D.

3) Figure 7, Panel e. Based on Figure 7, Panel e, the concentration of mineral dust between May 25 to May 31 is on the order of 60 micrograms/m^3. I believe this is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than average values typically observed in the arctic during spring-summer. These mineral dust concentrations are also correlated with the high INP concentrations. Based on this observation, I am wondering if mineral dust can explain all the data in Figure 4, panel A. To confirm this (or rule this out) please perform a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation to estimate the INP concentrations from mineral dust at -5, -10, and -15 C. Assume the average diameter of mineral dust is roughly 5 micrometers, the mass of mineral dust is roughly 60 micrograms/m^3, and ns-values for mineral dust (Niemand et al., 2012). Also, please include this type of calculation in your manuscript to support your conclusions that the high temperature INPs are likely biological.

4) The authors indicate that the mineral dust may be coming from local road dust in addition to terrestrial dust sources. In this case, the dust would not be considered natural, correct? This should be mentioned in the abstract and summary.

Niemand, M., Moehler, O., Vogel, B., Vogel, H., Hoose, C., Connolly, P., Klein, H., Bingemer, H., DeMott, P., Skrotzki, J., and Leisner, T.: A Particle-Surface-Area-Based Parameterization of Immersion Freezing on Desert Dust Particles, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 69, 3077-3092, 10.1175/jas-d-11-0249.1, 2012.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (13 Nov 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Creamean et al., have satisfied most of my concerns and I think the paper should be accepted for publication after addressing the following minor comments.

1. The revised explanation of the relative humidity and the possible influence on the 50% cutoff of the stages is fine. I agree that this approach makes sense for assessing these particles as they would exist in nature. Can the authors specify if the other instrument were also made at RH (e.g., UHSAS)? Also, this data is compared with the Mason et al. (2015) study, but it’s not clear if Mason et al., also were making their measurements at ambient RH or for dry diameters. The concern is for the high RHs, the growth factors (especially in a marine environment) may be quite high. I don’t think anything needs to change other than mentioning these two things: 1) was UHSAS was dry/ambient? and 2) was Mason et al., 2015 was dry/ambient?
2. Please use caution in how the DeMott et al. (2010) study is cited with regards to INP size. In P9, L28, DeMott et al. (2010) was used to justify that “modeling studies suggest that INPs can be as small as 500nm” and later that “Stages C and D include particles that are thought to be less efficient INPs relative to particles with larger diameters”. However, DeMott et al. (2010) state that 500 nm has been shown as the mode diameter of ice crystal residuals, meaning that 50% of the INP population resides in the particle range less than 0.5 microns. From their paper:

“For example, the mode diameter of particles found at the centers of single ice crystals has been reported to be∼0.5 μm(26).We have measured a similar mode size for IN collected and analyzed in many of the same studies represented in Fig. 2 (24).

“The choice of 0.5-μm diameter as the lower limit for summing number concentrations of “large” particles is a relatively arbitrary one of convenience, selected to limit the influence on derived relationships of high concentrations of non-IN particles in the range 0.1–0.5 μm, while retaining sufficient number concentrations of particles to reference to IN concentrations.”

Knowledge regarding the size of INPs is limited, which is why the approach used by Creamean et al. is so valuable.
3. Figure 2: top panel is mislabeled (both right and left are labeled CPCf).
4. Figure 3 – All panels are missing the labels that were in the original draft (a-d, with size ranges).
5. Figure 5 – Cannot read/follow the colorbar for the top 4 panels.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (13 Nov 2018) by Ryan Sullivan

AR by Jessie Creamean on behalf of the Authors (19 Nov 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (20 Nov 2018) by Ryan Sullivan

AR by Jessie Creamean on behalf of the Authors (26 Nov 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (27 Nov 2018) by Ryan Sullivan

AR by Jessie Creamean on behalf of the Authors (30 Nov 2018) Manuscript

Short summary

Warm-temperature ice nucleating particles (INPs) were observed during a springtime transition period of the melting of frozen surfaces in Northern Alaska. Such INPs were likely biological and from marine and terrestrial (tundra) sources. Influxes of these efficient INPs may have important implications for Arctic cloud ice formation and, consequently, the surface energy budget.