A miniaturised balloon-borne cloud water sampler and its deployment in
the high Arctic
Abstract
Poor understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions and cloud feedback
processes in the Arctic climate system limit our ability to constrain
future climate in the region and one important knowledge gap is the
source of particles upon which cloud droplets and ice crystals have
formed. If representative cloud-water can be obtained from Arctic
clouds, it’s chemical composition can be analysed to infer the sources
of particles present within it. However, the balloon-borne active cloud
water sampling systems required to obtain such samples have not
previously been feasible due to their weight and the challenging
environmental conditions. Here we present a miniaturised cloud-water
sampler for balloon-borne collection of cloud water which was deployed
during the Microbiology-Ocean-Cloud-Coupling in the High Arctic (MOCCHA)
campaign in August and September 2018 along with the deployment protocol
required to obtain representative samples in the pristine conditions
encountered. We present the chemical composition of the samples obtained
as well as the ice-nucleating activity of the samples and discuss the
implications of our results on aerosol-cloud interactions in the high
Arctic.