Some Impacts of Atmospheric Aerosols

HNO3

N2O5

Direct and Indirect Effects on Gas-Phase

Effects on Climate Composition
•directly scattering solar •Surfaces for
radiation heterogeneous chemistry

•altering number and size •Multiphase reaction

distribution of cloud drops volumes [S(IV)S(VII)]
 Some Sources of
Aerosol Particles
Secondary Particles

SO2 +OH (+H2O)H2SO4

Secondary Mass Growth
Primary
particles
RH + OHRCOOH
 Aerosol Particle Size: Diameter vs.
Effective Diameters
For many particles, spherical
geometry good assumption.
“Diameter” has physical meaning

Spherical?
 Some Effective Diameters

Relation to
aerodynamic
rp diameter and other
physical properties
of particle not well
rp understood for
fractal like soot
particles.

Aerodynamic Diameter Electric Mobility Diameter

Same terminal falling speed Same trajectory in calibrated
in air as a particle with electric field as a spherical
density 1g/cm3 and radius rp singly charged particle with
radius rp
 Bean Counting: Aerosol Size Distributions
0.005 0.05 0.3 1.0

0.001 0.02 0.1 0.6 10

Number Concentration (cm-3)

Problems
1. Information lost at small sizes
due to large size range
2. Comparing particle
concentrations in different
bins marred by varying bin size
3. Area under curve is not
proportional to total particle
0 0.5
Diameter (m)
1.0 number concentration
 Visual Representation of Particle Size Distributions

Ni/Dpi vs. Dp Ni/log(Dpi) vs. Log(Dp)

4500

4000
30
cm-3)

3500
25
Number Concentration (microns
-1

3000

dN/dlog(Dp) (cm-3)
2500 20

2000 15

1500
10
1000

5
500

0 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 10
-3
10
-2
10
-1
10
0
10
1

Diameter (microns) Diameter (microns)

Area under both curves yields Ntotal

But dN/dlogDp vs. logDp is more informative
 Questions
500

450
dN/dDp
dN/dlogDp The figure shows various
dN/dlnDp
400 representations of the
350
same aerosol size
Number Distribution

300
distribution. Under which
250

200
curve(s) is the area equal
150 to the total particle
100 number concentration?
50
•dN/dDp (blue)
0
10
-2
10
-1

Diameter (microns)
10
0
•dN/dlogDp (green)
•dN/dlnDp (red)
dN/dlogDp only. Why?
 Area, Volume-Mass Distributions
Heterogeneous and multiphase reaction rates
depend on surface area or volume, respectively.

Gravitational settling rates depend on mass and air

quality standards are mass-based.
--Assuming spherical
dN/dlogDp
300 dS/dlogDp
Area
250 geometry and dDp0
Distribution Function

200

150
dS(Dp) = Dp2n(Dp)dDp
100

Number
50
dV(Dp) = (/6)Dp3n(Dp)dDp
0
-3 -2 -1 0 1
10 10 10 10 10
Diameter (microns)
 Questions

1. What are the units of Stot and Vtot?

2. How is the mass distribution function calculated?

3. What is the relevant property (area, volume, mass) for

the following aerosol particle processes:
• Scavenging of HNO3 by mineral dust
• Acidification of aerosols by gas-phase H2SO4
• Light scattering efficiency
• Amount of Fe deposited to ocean by dust
Smoothed Vertical Profiles of Aerosol
Number Concentrations—(highly variable)

Boundary layer: 10 – 105 cm-3 range in number concentration

Free Troposphere: ~100-300 cm-3 on average
Common Modes of Atmospheric
Aerosol Distributions
Typical Number Distribution for Urban Aerosols

Solid line: what would be observed,

composed of 3 modes

Dotted/Dashed lines: Two common

parameterizations
•Junge Distribution (dashed line)
is a power law. Has some useful
properties but requires care.

•Log-Normal distribution (dotted

line) is most often used
Continental and Marine Number Distributions

Lower numbers in these regions

relative to urban aerosols,
especially in the nucleation mode.

Dominant accumulation mode

indicative of “aged” particles.

Giant aerosols over ocean

dominated by sea salt.
 The Log-Normal Distribution
The Log-normal distribution
•Bell-curve shape in log space

2

x
The familiar normal (Gaussian)
distribution
•Bell-curve shape in linear space
•68% of variance about mean ( x )
captured by 2 (width) x and ?