We present microphysical observations of cumulus clouds measured over the southwest peninsula of the UK during the COnvective Precipitation Experiment (COPE) in August 2013, which are framed into a ...wider context using ground-based and airborne radar measurements. Two lines of cumulus clouds formed in the early afternoon along convergence lines aligned with the peninsula. The lines became longer and broader during the afternoon due to new cell formation and stratiform regions forming downwind of the convective cells. Ice concentrations up to 350 L−1, well in excess of the expected ice nuclei (IN) concentrations, were measured in the mature stratiform regions, suggesting that secondary ice production was active. Detailed sampling focused on an isolated liquid cloud that glaciated as it matured to merge with a band of cloud downwind. In the initial cell, drizzle concentrations increased from ∼ 0.5 to ∼ 20 L−1 in around 20 min. Ice concentrations developed up to a few per litre, which is around the level expected of primary IN. The ice images were most consistent with freezing drizzle, rather than smaller cloud drops or interstitial IN forming the first ice. As new cells emerged in and around the cloud, ice concentrations up to 2 orders of magnitude higher than the predicted IN concentrations developed, and the cloud glaciated over a period of 12–15 min. Almost all of the first ice particles to be observed were frozen drops, while vapour-grown ice crystals were dominant in the latter stages. Our observations are consistent with the production of large numbers of small secondary ice crystals/fragments, by a mechanism such as Hallett–Mossop or droplets shattering upon freezing. Some of the small ice froze drizzle drops on contact, while others grew more slowly by vapour deposition. Graupel and columns were seen in cloud penetrations up to the −12 °C level, though many ice particles were mixed habit due to riming and growth by vapour deposition at multiple temperatures. Our observations demonstrate that the freezing of drizzle/raindrops is an important process that dominates the formation of large ice in the intermediate stages of cloud development. As these frozen drops were the first precipitation observed, interactions between the warm-rain and secondary ice production processes appear to be key to determining the timing and location of precipitation.
The Fennec climate programme aims to improve understanding of the Saharan climate system through a synergy of observations and modelling. We present a description of the Fennec airborne observations ...during 2011 and 2012 over the remote Sahara (Mauritania and Mali) and the advances in the understanding of mineral dust and boundary layer processes they have provided. Aircraft instrumentation aboard the UK FAAM BAe146 and French SAFIRE (Service des Avions Francais Instrumentes pour la Recherche en Environnement) Falcon 20 is described, with specific focus on instrumentation specially developed for and relevant to Saharan meteorology and dust. Flight locations, aims and associated meteorology are described. Examples and applications of aircraft measurements from the Fennec flights are presented, highlighting new scientific results delivered using a synergy of different instruments and aircraft. These include (1) the first airborne measurement of dust particles sizes of up to 300 microns and associated dust fluxes in the Saharan atmospheric boundary layer (SABL), (2) dust uplift from the breakdown of the nocturnal low-level jet before becoming visible in SEVIRI (Spinning Enhanced Visible Infra-Red Imager) satellite imagery, (3) vertical profiles of the unique vertical structure of turbulent fluxes in the SABL, (4) in situ observations of processes in SABL clouds showing dust acting as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and ice nuclei (IN) at -15 degree C, (5) dual-aircraft observations of the SABL dynamics, thermodynamics and composition in the Saharan heat low region (SHL), (6) airborne observations of a dust storm associated with a cold pool (haboob) issued from deep convection over the Atlas Mountains, (7) the first airborne chemical composition measurements of dust in the SHL region with differing composition, sources (determined using Lagrangian backward trajectory calculations) and absorption properties between 2011 and 2012, (8) coincident ozone and dust surface area measurements suggest coarser particles provide a route for ozone depletion, (9) discrepancies between airborne coarse-mode size distributions and AERONET (AERosol Robotic NETwork) sunphotometer retrievals under light dust loadings. These results provide insights into boundary layer and dust processes in the SHL region - a region of substantial global climatic importance.
More than half the world's rainforest has been lost to agriculture since the Industrial Revolution. Among the most widespread tropical crops is oil palm (Elaeis guineensis): global production now ...exceeds 35 million tonnes per year. In Malaysia, for example, 13% of land area is now oil palm plantation, compared with 1% in 1974. There are enormous pressures to increase palm oil production for food, domestic products, and, especially, biofuels. Greater use of palm oil for biofuel production is predicated on the assumption that palm oil is an "environmentally friendly" fuel feedstock. Here we show, using measurements and models, that oil palm plantations in Malaysia directly emit more oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds than rainforest. These compounds lead to the production of ground-level ozone (O₃), an air pollutant that damages human health, plants, and materials, reduces crop productivity, and has effects on the Earth's climate. Our measurements show that, at present, O₃ concentrations do not differ significantly over rainforest and adjacent oil palm plantation landscapes. However, our model calculations predict that if concentrations of oxides of nitrogen in Borneo are allowed to reach those currently seen over rural North America and Europe, ground-level O₃ concentrations will reach 100 parts per billion (10⁹) volume (ppbv) and exceed levels known to be harmful to human health. Our study provides an early warning of the urgent need to develop policies that manage nitrogen emissions if the detrimental effects of palm oil production on air quality and climate are to be avoided.
The REgents PARk and Tower Environmental Experiment (REPARTEE) comprised two campaigns in London in October 2006 and October/November 2007. The experiment design involved measurements at a heavily ...trafficked roadside site, two urban background sites and an elevated site at 160-190 m above ground on the BT Tower, supplemented in the second campaign by Doppler lidar measurements of atmospheric vertical structure. A wide range of measurements of airborne particle physical metrics and chemical composition were made as well as measurements of a considerable range of gas phase species and the fluxes of both particulate and gas phase substances. Significant findings include (a) demonstration of the evaporation of traffic-generated nanoparticles during both horizontal and vertical atmospheric transport; (b) generation of a large base of information on the fluxes of nanoparticles, accumulation mode particles and specific chemical components of the aerosol and a range of gas phase species, as well as the elucidation of key processes and comparison with emissions inventories; (c) quantification of vertical gradients in selected aerosol and trace gas species which has demonstrated the important role of regional transport in influencing concentrations of sulphate, nitrate and secondary organic compounds within the atmosphere of London; (d) generation of new data on the atmospheric structure and turbulence above London, including the estimation of mixed layer depths; (e) provision of new data on trace gas dispersion in the urban atmosphere through the release of purposeful tracers; (f) the determination of spatial differences in aerosol particle size distributions and their interpretation in terms of sources and physico-chemical transformations; (g) studies of the nocturnal oxidation of nitrogen oxides and of the diurnal behaviour of nitrate aerosol in the urban atmosphere, and (h) new information on the chemical composition and source apportionment of particulate matter size fractions in the atmosphere of London derived both from bulk chemical analysis and aerosol mass spectrometry with two instrument types.
The effective ice‐particle density, parametrized through a mass–dimension relation, is widely used in ice microphysical schemes for weather and climate models. In this study, we use aircraft‐based ...observations in mid‐latitude cirrus taken during the Constrain field programme in 2010. The low temperatures and a humidity often close to ice saturation meant that the typical ice particles observed were small (maximum dimension 20–800 µm) and ice water contents were low (0.001–0.05 g m−3). Two new instruments are included in this study: the Small Ice Detector Mark‐2 (SID‐2) and the deep‐cone Nevzorov Total Water Content probe. SID‐2 is a new single‐particle light‐scattering instrument and was used to identify and size small ice particles (10–150 µm). The deep‐cone Nevzorov probe is shown to be able to collect small ice masses with sufficient sensitivity. The focus of this article is on the effective density of small ice particles (both pristine ice crystals and small aggregates up to 600 µm maximum dimension). Due to instrument limitations in previous studies, the effective density of small ice particles is questionable.
Aircraft flights in six cirrus cases provided ice‐particle measurements throughout the depth of the cirrus. The particle size distribution (PSD) was mostly bimodal. The smaller ice‐crystal mode dominated the PSD near cloud top and the larger ice‐aggregate mode dominated near cloud base. A mass–dimension relation valid for both ice crystals and aggregates was found that provided a best fit to the observations. For small ice particles (less than 70 µm diameter) the density is constant (700 kg m−3), while for larger ice crystals or aggregates the mass–dimension relation is m(D) = 0.0257D2.0. These measurements allow testing of the diagnostic split between ice crystals and aggregates used in the Met Office Unified Model.
Aerosol particle size distributions were measured below and above a tropical rainforest canopy in Borneo, Malaysia, in June/July 2008 using the WIBS-3: a single particle dual channel fluorescence ...spectrometer. Material in the size range 0.8–20 μm was characterized according to optical equivalent diameter (DP), morphology and fluorescence at 310–400 nm and 400–600 nm following excitation at 280 nm and 370 nm respectively. Particles fluorescent after both excitations are likely to be fluorescent primary biological aerosol particles (FBAP). Measured FBAP number concentration (NFBAP) at both sites exhibited clear diurnal cycles. The largest variability was observed in the understorey, where NFBAP reached a minimum of 50–100 L−1 in late morning. In mid afternoon it exhibited strong transient fluctuations as large as 4000 L−1 that were followed by sustained concentrations of 1000–2500 L−1 that reduced steadily between midnight and sunrise. Above the canopy FBAP number ranged from 50–100 L−1 during the daytime to 200–400 L−1 at night but did not exhibit the transient enhancements seen in the understorey. The strong FBAP fluctuations were attributed to the release of fungal spores below the canopy and appeared to be linked to elevated relative humidity. The mean FBAP number fraction in the size range 0.8 μm
Optical particle counters (OPCs) are used regularly for atmospheric research, measuring particle scattering cross sections to generate particle size distribution histograms. This manuscript presents ...two methods for calibrating OPCs with case studies based on a Passive Cavity Aerosol Spectrometer Probe (PCASP) and a Cloud Droplet Probe (CDP), both of which are operated on the Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements BAe-146 research aircraft. A probability density function based method is provided for modification of the OPC bin boundaries when the scattering properties of measured particles are different to those of the calibration particles due to differences in refractive index or shape. This method provides mean diameters and widths for OPC bins based upon Mie-Lorenz theory or any other particle scattering theory, without the need for smoothing, despite the highly nonlinear and non-monotonic relationship between particle size and scattering cross section. By calibrating an OPC in terms of its scattering cross section the optical properties correction can be applied with minimal information loss, and performing correction in this manner provides traceable and transparent uncertainty propagation throughout the whole process. Analysis of multiple calibrations has shown that for the PCASP the bin centres differ by up to 30% from the manufacturer's nominal values and can change by up to approximately 20% when routine maintenance is performed. The CDP has been found to be less sensitive than the manufacturer's specification with differences in sizing of between 1.6 ± 0.8 μm and 4.7 ± 1.8 μm for one flight. Over the course of the Fennec project in the Sahara the variability of calibration was less than the calibration uncertainty in 6 out of 7 calibrations performed. As would be expected from Mie-Lorenz theory, the impact of the refractive index corrections has been found to be largest for absorbing materials and the impact on Saharan dust measurements made as part of the Fennec project has been found to be up to a factor of 3 for the largest particles measured by CDP with diameters of approximately 120 μm. In an example case, using the calibration and refractive index corrections presented in this work allowed Saharan dust measurement from the PCASP, CDP and a Cloud Imaging Probe to agree within the uncertainty of the calibration. The agreement when using only the manufacturer's specification was poor. Software tools have been developed to perform these calibrations and corrections and are now available as open source resources for the community via the SourceForge repository.
Measurements from four case studies in spring and summer-time Arctic stratocumulus clouds during the Aerosol-Cloud Coupling And Climate Interactions in the Arctic (ACCACIA) campaign are presented. We ...compare microphysics observations between cases and with previous measurements made in the Arctic and Antarctic. During ACCACIA, stratocumulus clouds were observed to consist of liquid at cloud tops, often at distinct temperature inversions. The cloud top regions precipitated low concentrations of ice into the cloud below. During the spring cases median ice number concentrations (~ 0.5 L-1) were found to be lower by about a factor of 5 than observations from the summer campaign (~ 3 L-1). Cloud layers in the summer spanned a warmer temperature regime than in the spring and enhancement of ice concentrations in these cases was found to be due to secondary ice production through the Hallett-Mossop (H-M) process. Aerosol concentrations during spring ranged from ~ 300-400 cm-3 in one case to lower values of ~ 50-100 cm-3 in the other. The concentration of aerosol with sizes Dp > 0.5 mu m was used in a primary ice nucleus (IN) prediction scheme (DeMott et al., 2010). Predicted IN values varied depending on aerosol measurement periods but were generally greater than maximum observed median values of ice crystal concentrations in the spring cases, and less than the observed ice concentrations in the summer due to the influence of secondary ice production. Comparison with recent cloud observations in the Antarctic summer (Grosvenor et al., 2012), reveals lower ice concentrations in Antarctic clouds in comparable seasons. An enhancement of ice crystal number concentrations (when compared with predicted IN numbers) was also found in Antarctic stratocumulus clouds spanning the H-M temperature zone; however, concentrations were about an order of magnitude lower than those observed in the Arctic summer cases but were similar to the peak values observed in the colder Arctic spring cases, where the H-M mechanism did not operate.
The timing, kinematics, and processes responsible for the rapid transition from subduction to oblique rifting and the localization of the Pacific-North America plate boundary in the Gulf of ...California are not well understood. Well exposed volcanic rocks deposited between ~15 and 10Ma in the Sierra Bacha (coastal Sonora, México) preserve a record of late Miocene deformation on the eastern rifted margin of the Gulf of California and offer new insights into the timing and kinematic evolution of oblique rifting. Detailed geologic mapping, fault kinematic analysis, U–Pb and 40Ar/39Ar geochronology, and paleomagnetic data reveal that the >2km-thick composite volcanic section is cut by a series of southwest-dipping, domino-style normal faults and uniformly tilted down-to-the-northeast. Palinspastic cross-section restoration suggests that the region experienced ca. 55–60% northeast-southwest-directed extension between ~11.7 and ~10–9Ma. Fault kinematic data reflect relatively minor dextral transtension either following or during the later stages of extension. Paleomagnetic results indicating modest clockwise vertical-axis block rotation suggest that dextral shear was concentrated in the southwest of the study area near the modern coastline.
These results support an emerging model in which dextral strain was not ubiquitous across Sonora and did not initiate immediately following the ~12.5Ma transition from subduction to oblique rifting. Instead, strain east of the Baja California microplate at this latitude evolved from extension-dominated transtension prior to ~8Ma to dextral shear-dominated transtension by ~7–6Ma. The onset of dextral shear in coastal Sonora likely resulted from an increase in rift obliquity due to a change in relative plate motion direction at ~8Ma. The increase in rift obliquity and resultant onset of significant strike-slip faulting played a crucial role in facilitating subsequent plate boundary localization and marine incursion in the northern Gulf of California by ~6Ma and continental rupture at ~2–1Ma.
•Volcanism occurred from ca. 15–10Ma in the Sierra Bacha.•Northeast tilting and NE–SW-directed extension occurred on SW-dipping normal faults.•The majority of 55–60%-extension occurred between ca. 11.7 and 9.6Ma.•Minor late-stage dextral transtension (block rotation) was focused along the coast.•Shear-dominated transtension began at ca. 8–7Ma across the northern proto-Gulf.
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