Characterizing Ice Nucleating Particles over the Southern Ocean using
Simultaneous Aircraft and Ship Observations
Abstract
Supercooled liquid clouds are ubiquitous over the Southern Ocean (SO),
even to temperatures below -20 °C, and comprise a large fraction of the
marine boundary layer (MBL) clouds. Earth system models and reanalysis
products have struggled to reproduce the observed cloud phase
distribution and occurrence of cloud ice in the region. Recent
simulations found the microphysical representation of ice nucleation and
growth has a large impact on these properties, however, measurements of
SO ice nucleating particles (INPs) to validate simulations are sparse.
This study presents measurements of INPs from simultaneous aircraft and
ship campaigns conducted over the SO in austral summer 2018, which
include the first in situ observations in and above cloud in the region.
Our results confirm recent observations that INP concentrations are
uniformly lower than measurements made in the late 1960s. While INP
concentrations below and above cloud are similar, higher ice nucleation
efficiency above cloud supports model inferences that the dominant INP
composition varies with height. Model parameterizations based solely on
aerosol properties capture the mean relationship between INP
concentration and temperature but not the observed variability, which is
likely related to the only modest correlations observed between INPs and
environmental or aerosol metrics. An updated parameterization for marine
INPs is proposed, which reduces bias relative to existing methods by
including wind speed as an additional variable. Direct and indirect
inference of marine INP size suggests MBL INPs, at least those in the
sub-2.5 μm range, are dominated by particles with diameters smaller than
500 nm.