Erik S. Thomson

Ice structures, patterns, and processes: A view across the icefields

European Science Foundation workshop Euroice 2008 held in Granada, Spain from 1–4 October 2008; Spanish national project, Hielocris, financed by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas; funding from FWF, Austria (No. P23027); MINCINN, Spain (No. FIS2010-16455, No. PR2010-0012, and No. FIS2010-22322-528C02-02); and SNSF, Switzerland (No. 200021121857)

Collision Dynamics and Solvation of Water Molecules in a Liquid Methanol Film

Environmental molecular beam experiments are used to examine water interactions with liquid methanol films at temperatures from 170 to 190 K. We find that water molecules with 0.32 eV incident kinetic energy are efficiently trapped by the liquid methanol. The scattering process is characterized by an efficient loss of energy to surface modes with a minor component of the incident beam that is inelastically scattered. Thermal desorption of water molecules has a well characterized Arrhenius form with an activation energy of 0.47 ± 0.11 eV and pre-exponential factor of 4.6 × 10^(15±3) s^(–1). We also observe a temperature-dependent incorporation of incident water into the methanol layer. The implication for fundamental studies and environmental applications is that even an alcohol as simple as methanol can exhibit complex and temperature-dependent surfactant behavior.

Grain boundary melting in ice

We describe an optical scattering study of grain boundary premelting in water ice. Ubiquitous long ranged attractive polarization forces act to suppress grain boundary melting whereas repulsive forces originating in screened Coulomb interactions and classical colligative effects enhance it. The liquid enhancing effects can be manipulated by adding dopant ions to the system. For all measured grain boundaries this leads to increasing premelted film thickness with increasing electrolyte concentration. Although we understand that the interfacial surface charge densities q(s) and solute concentrations can potentially dominate the film thickness, we cannot directly measure them within a given grain boundary. Therefore, as a framework for interpreting the data we consider two appropriate q(s) dependent limits; one is dominated by the colligative effect and other is dominated by electrostatic interactions.

Water Accommodation and Desorption Kinetics on Ice

The interaction of water vapor with ice remains incompletely understood despite its importance in environmental processes. A particular concern is the probability for water accommodation on the ice surface, for which results from earlier studies vary by more than 2 orders of magnitude. Here, we apply an environmental molecular beam method to directly determine water accommodation and desorption kinetics on ice. Short D2O gas pulses collide with H2O ice between 170 and 200 K, and a fraction of the adsorbed molecules desorbs within tens of milliseconds by first order kinetics. The bulk accommodation coefficient decreases nonlinearly with increasing temperature and reaches 0.41 ± 0.18 at 200 K. The kinetics are well described by a model wherein water molecules adsorb in a surface state from which they either desorb or become incorporated into the bulk ice structure. The weakly bound surface state affects water accommodation on the ice surface with important implications for atmospheric cloud processes.

Water interactions with acetic acid layers on ice and graphite.

Adsorbed organic compounds modify the properties of environmental interfaces with potential implications for many Earth system processes. Here, we describe experimental studies of water interactions with acetic acid (AcOH) layers on ice and graphite surfaces at temperatures from 186 to 200 K. Hyperthermal D2O water molecules are efficiently trapped on all of the investigated surfaces, with only a minor fraction that scatters inelastically after an 80% loss of kinetic energy to surface modes. Trapped molecules desorb rapidly from both μm-thick solid AcOH and AcOH monolayers on graphite, indicating that water has limited opportunities to form hydrogen bonds with these surfaces. In contrast, trapped water molecules bind efficiently to AcOH-covered ice and remain on the surface on the observational time scale of the experiments (60 ms). Thus, adsorbed AcOH is observed to have a significant impact on water-ice surface properties and to enhance the water accommodation coefficient compared to bare ice surfaces. The mechanism for increased water uptake and the implications for atmospheric cloud processes are discussed.

Water Accommodation on Ice and Organic Surfaces: Insights from Environmental Molecular Beam Experiments

Water uptake on aerosol and cloud particles in the atmosphere modifies their chemistry and microphysics with important implications for climate on Earth. Here, we apply an environmental molecular beam (EMB) method to characterize water accommodation on ice and organic surfaces. The adsorption of surface-active compounds including short-chain alcohols, nitric acid, and acetic acid significantly affects accommodation of D2O on ice. n-Hexanol and n-butanol adlayers reduce water uptake by facilitating rapid desorption and function as inefficient barriers for accommodation as well as desorption of water, while the effect of adsorbed methanol is small. Water accommodation is close to unity on nitric-acid- and acetic-acid-covered ice, and accommodation is significantly more efficient than that on the bare ice surface. Water uptake is inefficient on solid alcohols and acetic acid but strongly enhanced on liquid phases including a quasi-liquid layer on solid n-butanol. The EMB method provides unique information on accommodation and rapid kinetics on volatile surfaces, and these studies suggest that adsorbed organic and acidic compounds need to be taken into account when describing water at environmental interfaces.

Interactions of N2O5 and related nitrogen oxides with ice surfaces: desorption kinetics and collision dynamics.

The detailed interactions of nitrogen oxides with ice are of fundamental interest and relevance for chemistry in cold regions of the atmosphere. Here, the interactions of NO, NO2, N2O4, and N2O5 with ice surfaces at temperatures between 93 and 180 K are investigated with molecular beam techniques. Surface collisions are observed to result in efficient transfer of kinetic energy and trapping of molecules on the ice surfaces. NO and NO2 rapidly desorb from pure ice with upper bounds for the surface binding energies of 0.16 ± 0.02 and 0.26 ± 0.03 eV, respectively. Above 150 K, N2O4 desorption follows first-order kinetics and is well described by the Arrhenius parameters Ea = 0.39 ± 0.04 eV and A = 10((15.4±1.2)) s(-1), while a stable N2O4 adlayer is formed at lower temperatures. A fraction of incoming N2O5 reacts to form HNO3 on the ice surface. The N2O5 desorption rates are substantially lower on pure water ice (Arrhenius parameters: Ea = 0.36 ± 0.02 eV; A = 10((15.3±0.7)) s(-1)) than on HNO3-covered ice (Ea = 0.24 ± 0.02 eV; A = 10((11.5±0.7)) s(-1)). The N2O5 desorption kinetics also sensitively depend on the sub-monolayer coverage of HNO3, with a minimum in N2O5 desorption rate at a low but finite coverage of HNO3. The studies show that none of the systems with resolvable desorption kinetics undergo ordinary desorption from ice, and instead desorption likely involves two or more surface states, with additional complexity added by coadsorbed molecules.

Intensification of ice nucleation observed in ocean ship emissions

Shipping contributes primary and secondary emission products to the atmospheric aerosol burden that have implications for climate, clouds, and air quality from regional to global scales. In this study we exam the potential impact of ship emissions with regards to ice nucleating particles. Particles that nucleate ice are known to directly affect precipitation and cloud microphysical properties. We have collected and analyzed particles for their ice nucleating capacity from a shipping channel outside a large Scandinavia port. We observe that ship plumes amplify the background levels of ice nucleating particles and discuss the larger scale implications. The measured ice nucleating particles suggest that the observed amplification is most likely important in regions with low levels of background particles. The Arctic, which as the sea ice pack declines is opening to transit and natural resource exploration and exploitation at an ever increasing rate, is highlighted as such a region.

A novel gas-vacuum interface for environmental molecular beam studies

Molecular beam techniques are commonly used to obtain detailed information about reaction dynamics and kinetics of gas-surface interactions. These experiments are traditionally performed in vacuum and the dynamic state of surfaces under ambient conditions is thereby excluded from detailed studies. Herein we describe the development and demonstration of a new vacuum-gas interface that increases the accessible pressure range in environmental molecular beam (EMB) experiments. The interface consists of a grating close to a macroscopically flat surface, which allows for experiments at pressures above 1 Pa including angularly resolved measurements of the emitted flux. The technique is successfully demonstrated using key molecular beam experiments including elastic helium and inelastic water scattering from graphite, helium and light scattering from condensed adlayers, and water interactions with a liquid 1-butanol surface. The method is concluded to extend the pressure range and flexibility in EMB studies with implications for investigations of high pressure interface phenomena in diverse fields including catalysis, nanotechnology, environmental science, and life science. Potential further improvements of the technique are discussed.

A continuous flow diffusion chamber study of sea salt particles acting as cloud nuclei: deliquescence and ice nucleation

Abstract Phase changes of sea salt particles alter their physical and chemical properties, which is significant for Earth’s chemistry and energy budget. In this study, a continuous flow diffusion chamber is used to investigate deliquescence, homogeneous and heterogeneous ice nucleation between 242 K and 215 K, of four salts: pure NaCl, pure MgCl2, synthetic sea water salt, and salt distilled from sampled sea water. Anhydrous particles, aqueous droplets and ice particles were discriminated using a polarisation-sensitive optical particle counter coupled with a machine learning analysis technique. The measured onset deliquescence relative humidities agree with previous studies, where sea water salts deliquescence at lower humidities than pure NaCl. Deliquesced salt droplets homogenously freeze when the relative humidity reaches a sufficiently high value at temperatures below 233 K. From 224 K and below, deposition nucleation freezing on a fraction of NaCl particles was observed at humidities lower than the deliquescence relative humidity. At these low temperatures, otherwise unactivated salt particles deliquesced at the expected deliquescence point, followed by homogeneous freezing at temperatures as low as 215 K. Thus, the observed sea salt particles exhibit a triad of temperature-dependent behaviours. First, they act as cloud condensation particles (CCNs) > 233 K, second they can be homogeneous freezing nuclei (HFNs) < 233 K and finally they act as ice nucleating particles (INPs) for heterogeneous nucleation <224 K.