A study of the relationship between anthropogenic sulfate and cloud drop nucleation
This document investigates the relationship between anthropogenic sulfate-containing aerosols and the condensationally produced cloud drops. The changes in aerosol size distribution associated with anthropogenic sulfur emissions may increase the number of cloud drops with subsequent influence on cloud albedo and climate. It has been suggested that the increase in CCN in industrial regions might explain why the Northern Hemisphere has not been warming as rapidly as the Southern Hemisphere over the last 50 Years (Wigley, 1989). In reality, the aerosol size distribution is the result of processes working simultaneously and continuously with such sources as sulfur, soot, particulate organic carbon, nitrate, ammonium, etc. Instead of applying a complete aerosol model to investigate the effect of anthropogenic sulfur emissions on the aerosol size distribution, we simply derived the anthropogenic sulfate-containing aerosol distribution by assuming that 75% of the anthropogenic was formed through aqueous-phase oxidation and the remaining 25% condensed onto a Prescribed preexisting particle distribution. Uncertainties may arise from the assumed fraction of sulfate produced by condensation and in cloud oxidation. In addition, new particle formation through homogeneous nucleation of H{sub 2}SO{sub 4}/H{sub 2}O is ignored in this paper.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States); National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 10190082
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-JC-118559; CONF-950124-2; ON: DE95001499
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 75. annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society: diamond anniversary,Dallas, TX (United States),15-20 Jan 1995; Other Information: PBD: Sep 1994
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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