GAC lunch seminar

Research profile seminar

Welcome to a GAC lunch seminar with Isabelle Steinke, visiting researcher from the Institute of Meteorology, University of Leipzig, Germany.

TALK
Synthetic aerosol systems - a new experimental platform for investigating heterogeneous ice formation in the lab?

The production of cloud ice is governed by the interplay of many different atmospheric processes, ranging from the emission of aerosol particles which are able to initiate the formation of ice crystals, to ice multiplication and the impacts of cloud dynamics. Linking heterogeneous ice nucleation and aerosol particle types is challenging due to the rarity of ice nucleating particles and the huge variability of ambient aerosol in size and composition. Synthetic aerosol particles can help build a fundamental understanding of heterogeneous ice nucleation by reducing complexity and enabling a more direct comparison between aerosol properties and ice nucleation propensities. In my talk, I will discuss cloud chamber experiments with simple two-component systems as a proxy for mineral-organics mixtures. We investigated the ice nucleation propensities of these aerosol systems under mixed-phase cloud conditions, and observed clear differences in their ice nucleation propensities which can be traced back to the composition of each synthetic aerosol system.

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