Bernard G. Lafleur

PELTI: Measuring the Passing Efficiency of an Airborne Low Turbulence Aerosol Inlet

In an effort to improve the accuracy of airborne aerosol studies, we compared a new porous-diffuser low-turbulence inlet (LTI) with three other inlets on the NSF/NCAR C-130, using both dust and sea salt as test aerosols. Analysis of bulk filters behind the LTI and an external reference total aerosol sampler (TAS) found no significant differences, while both the NASA shrouded solid diffuser inlet (SD) and NCAR community aerosol inlet (CAI) passed smaller amounts. However, scanning electron microscopic analyses of particles behind the LTI and TAS confirmed the model prediction that the LTI porous diffuser (PD) enhanced 7 μm particle concentrations by about 60%. Aerodynamic particle size distributions behind the other inlets began to diverge from enhancement-corrected LTI values above 2 μm, with mass concentrations of larger particles lower by as much as a factor of ten behind the CAI and a factor of 2 behind the SD. We conclude that the corrected LTI distributions were closer to ambient values than those from either the CAI or the SD. Since tubing losses contributed the most uncertainty when deducing ambient supermicron size distributions from LTI data, minimizing them should be a high priority for future experiments. Measured transfer tubing losses were larger than model estimates, in part because of some complex pieces for which no suitable model exists. The LTI represents a significant advance in our ability to sample populations of large particles from aircraft. A necessary part of using an LTI is the calculation of and correction for large-particle enhancement using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program. Although the solid diffuser inlet performed well under some conditions, its large-particle efficiency cannot be modeled, varies with humidity and particle morphology, and involves wall contact that has the potential to modify some particles.

New particle formation observed in the tropical//subtropical cirrus clouds

[1] Previous studies show that new particle formation takes place in the outflows of marine stratus and cumulus clouds. Here we show measurements of high concentrations of ultrafine particles, diameters (Dp) from 4 to 9 nm (N4–9), in interstitial cloud aerosol. These ultrafine particles indicate that in situ new particle formation occurs interstitially in cirrus clouds. Measurements were made at altitudes from 7 to 16 km over Florida with instruments on the WB-57F aircraft during Cirrus Regional Study of Tropical Anvils and Cirrus Layers-Florida Area Cirrus Experiments (CRYSTAL-FACE) in July 2002. Sizeresolved ice crystal particle concentrations and water vapor concentrations were measured to help identify the presence of cirrus clouds. About 72% of the in-cloud samples showed new particle formation events with the average N4–9 of 3.0 10 3 cm 3 , whereas about 56% of the out-of-cloud samples had events with the lower N4–9of 1.3 10 3 cm 3 . The periods during which high N4–9 appeared were often associated with times of increasing ice water content (IWC) and high relative humidity with respect to ice (RHI); however, the measured N4–9was not quantitatively correlated to IWC. The magnitude and frequency of new particle formation events seen in cirrus clouds were also higher than those previously observed in the tropical/subtropical upper troposphere in the absence of clouds. These results suggest that cirrus clouds may provide favorable conditions for particle formation, such as low temperatures, high RHI, high OH production (due to high water vapor), cloud electricity, and atmospheric convection. At present, however, particle formation mechanisms in clouds are unidentified. INDEX TERMS: 0305 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Aerosols and particles (0345, 4801); 0320 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Cloud physics and chemistry; 0335 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Ion chemistry of the atmosphere (2419, 2427); 0365 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Troposphere—composition and chemistry; 0368 Atmospheric Composition and Structure: Troposphere—constituent transport and chemistry;

An Evaluation of the Community Aerosol Inlet for the NCAR C-130 Research Aircraft

Abstract Based on both in-flight measurements and a fluid dynamics model, airflow in the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Aerosol Inlet (CAI) is similar to fully developed pipe flow. Distortions of the velocity field were pronounced when suction to inlet tubes was shut off, but conditions were otherwise insensitive to all flight parameters but airspeed. The principal value of the multiuser CAI system for NCARs C-130 is that it decelerates air with no curves until the velocity has been reduced to 10 m s−1. It then supplies uniformly modified air (after turbulent losses) to all users, enabling valid closure experiments. Chemical data from both the First Aerosol Characterization Experiment (ACE-1) and the Second Community Aerosol Inlet Evaluation Program (CAINE-II) clearly indicate that while passing efficiency for submicron aerosol is acceptable, very little of the sea salt mode mass is transmitted by the CAI to instruments inside the aircraft. Comparisons between chemical samples ...