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  4. Role of K-feldspar and quartz in global ice nucleation by mineral dust in mixed-phase clouds
 
research article

Role of K-feldspar and quartz in global ice nucleation by mineral dust in mixed-phase clouds

Chatziparaschos, Marios
•
Daskalakis, Nikos
•
Myriokefalitakis, Stelios
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February 2, 2023
Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics

Ice-nucleating particles (INPs) enable ice formation, profoundly affecting the microphysical and radiative properties, lifetimes, and precipitation rates of clouds. Mineral dust emitted from arid regions, particularly potassium-containing feldspar (K-feldspar), has been shown to be a very effective INP through immersion freezing in mixed-phase clouds. However, despite the fact that quartz has a significantly lower ice nucleation activity, it is more abundant than K-feldspar in atmospheric desert dust and therefore may be a significant source of INPs. In this contribution, we test this hypothesis by investigating the global and regional importance of quartz as a contributor to INPs in the atmosphere relative to K-feldspar. We have extended a global 3-D chemistry transport model (TM4-ECPL) to predict INP concentrations from both K-feldspar and quartz mineral dust particles with state-of-the-art parameterizations using the ice-active surface-site approach for immersion freezing. Our results show that, although K-feldspar remains the most important contributor to INP concentrations globally, affecting mid-level mixed-phase clouds, the contribution of quartz can also be significant. Quartz dominates the lowest and the highest altitudes of dust-derived INPs, affecting mainly low-level and high-level mixed-phase clouds. The consideration of quartz INPs also improves the comparison between simulations and observations at low temperatures. Our simulated INP concentrations predict similar to 51 % of the observations gathered from different campaigns within 1 order of magnitude and similar to 69 % within 1.5 orders of magnitude, despite the omission of other potentially important INP aerosol precursors like marine bioaerosols. Our findings support the inclusion of quartz in addition to K-feldspar as an INP in climate models and highlight the need for further constraining their abundance in arid soil surfaces along with their abundance, size distribution, and mixing state in the emitted dust atmospheric particles.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.5194/acp-23-1785-2023
Web of Science ID

WOS:000925096700001

Author(s)
Chatziparaschos, Marios
Daskalakis, Nikos
Myriokefalitakis, Stelios
Kalivitis, Nikos
Nenes, Athanasios  
Ageitos, Maria Goncalves
Costa-Suros, Montserrat
Perez Garcia-Pando, Carlos
Zanoli, Medea
Vrekoussis, Mihalis
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Date Issued

2023-02-02

Publisher

Copernicus GmbH

Published in
Atmospheric Chemistry And Physics
Volume

23

Issue

3

Start page

1785

End page

1801

Subjects

Environmental Sciences

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Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences

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Environmental Sciences & Ecology

•

condensation nuclei

•

particle concentrations

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mass concentration

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size distribution

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organic aerosol

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technical note

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model

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sensitivity

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variability

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cirrus

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LAPI  
Available on Infoscience
March 13, 2023
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/195885
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