Ion-induced nucleation of pure biogenic particles

Abstract

Atmospheric aerosols and their effect on clouds are thought to be important for anthropogenic radiative forcing of the climate, yet remain poorly understood. Globally, around half of cloud condensation nuclei originate from nucleation of atmospheric vapours. It is thought that sulfuric acid is essential to initiate most particle formation in the atmosphere, and that ions have a relatively minor role. Some laboratory studies, however, have reported organic particle formation without the intentional addition of sulfuric acid, although contamination could not be excluded. Here we present evidence for the formation of aerosol particles from highly oxidized biogenic vapours in the absence of sulfuric acid in a large chamber under atmospheric conditions. The highly oxygenated molecules (HOMs) are produced by ozonolysis of α-pinene. We find that ions from Galactic cosmic rays increase the nucleation rate by one to two orders of magnitude compared with neutral nucleation. Our experimental findings are supported by quantum chemical calculations of the cluster binding energies of representative HOMs. Ion-induced nucleation of pure organic particles constitutes a potentially widespread source of aerosol particles in terrestrial environments with low sulfuric acid pollution.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Kirkby, J Duplissy, J Sengupta, K Frege, C Gordon, H https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1822-3224 Williamson, C Heinritzi, M Simon, M Yan, C Almeida, J Trostl, J Nieminen, T Ortega, IK Wagner, R Adamov, A Amorim, A Bernhammer, AK Bianchi, F Breitenlechner, M Brilke, S Chen, X Craven, J Dias, A Ehrhart, S Flagan, RC Franchin, A Fuchs, C Guida, R Hakala, J Hoyle, CR Jokinen, T Junninen, H Kangasluoma, J Kim, J Krapf, M Kurten, A Laaksonen, A Lehtipalo, K Makhmutov, V Mathot, S Molteni, U Onnela, A Perakyla, O Piel, F Petaja, T Praplan, AP Pringle, K https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2190-5258 Rap, A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2319-6769 Richards, NAD https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3599-7475 Riipinen, I Rissanen, MP Rondo, L Sarnela, N Schobesberger, S Scott, CE https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0187-969X Seinfeld, JH Sipila, M Steiner, G Stozhkov, Y Stratmann, F Tomé, A Virtanen, A Vogel, AL Wagner, AC Wagner, PE Weingartner, E Wimmer, D Winkler, PM Ye, P Zhang, X Hansel, A Dommen, J Donahue, NM Worsnop, DR Baltensperger, U Kulmala, M Carslaw, K https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6800-154X Curtius, J
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons licence, users will need to obtain permission from the licence holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Published: 25 May 2016 Accepted: 16 March 2016
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/K015966/1
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	28 Oct 2016 13:25
Last Modified:	16 Sep 2020 16:37
Published Version:	http://doi.org/10.1038/nature17953
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Publishing Group
Identification Number:	10.1038/nature17953
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:100258

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Ion-induced nucleation of pure biogenic particles

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