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Anthropogenic dust as a significant source of ice-nucleating particles in the urban environment
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  • Jie Chen,
  • Zhijun Wu,
  • Xianda Gong,
  • Yanting Qiu,
  • Shiyi Chen,
  • Limin Zeng,
  • Min Hu
Jie Chen
Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETHZ
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Zhijun Wu
Peking University

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Xianda Gong
Washington University in St. Louis
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Yanting Qiu
Peking University
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Shiyi Chen
Peking University
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Limin Zeng
College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University
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Min Hu
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control
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Abstract

Anthropogenic dust is an important constituent of airborne particles in the urban environment but its ice nucleation activity remains uninvestigated. Here, we studied the sources and ice nucleating properties of size-resolved particles in the urban atmosphere under mixed-phase cloud conditions. The heat-resistant ice nucleating particles (INPs) unexpectedly contributed ~70% of the INPs in coarse mode at temperatures below −15 oC. Detailed size-resolved particle chemical composition analysis showed that these INPs were contributed by anthropogenic dust, such as traffic-influenced road dust. A parameterization based on coarse particles was developed to predict the anthropogenic dust INP concentration, due to their correlations on concentration and similarity in chemical compositions. The parameterization can be used for further evaluating the anthropogenic dust contribution to INPs on a global scale. We suggest anthropogenic dust associated with rapid urbanization will become an important factor for urban climate change by altering the cloud microphysics.
14 Apr 2023Submitted to ESS Open Archive
16 Apr 2023Published in ESS Open Archive