Characterizing ice nucleating particles in Seoul during ASIA-AQ campaign

Abstract

Ice nucleating particles (INPs) which are subset of aerosols in the atmosphere induce the ice formation in the clouds and thus play an important role in the initiation of precipitation in mixed phase clouds. They are also involved in determining the phase of clouds, which influences their albedo and lifetime. The atmospheric INPs data around globe is very scarce due to their very low concentration compared to aerosol concentration and large spatiotemporal variability, which limits our understanding of clouds containing ice and predictive capacity of ice formation in the climate model. Here, we report the characteristics of INPs in Seoul, highly urbanized area in Korea during the ASIA-AQ campaign (FebMar, 2024). ASIA-AQ campaign is an international collaborative field campaign aiming at understanding various aspects of air quality issue in East Asia through multi-perspective observation and modeling. The INPs data is obtained from PINE, fully-automated portable instrument for detection of atmospheric INPs over the wide temperature range. In addition to PINE, physicochemical properties of aerosols that can affect INPs properties and concentration will be examined using SMPS, CPC, AMS and etc. Lastly, since aerosols are capable of acting as both cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and INPs, the relationship between CCN and INPs will be investigated through comprehensive measurements with dual column CCN counter (CCN-200).