A miniaturised balloon-borne cloud water sampler and its deployment in the high Arctic

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.