First Routine Ice-Nucleating Particle Data Available From ARM Sites in Alaska, Oklahoma

 
Published: 16 May 2022

An ice nucleation spectrometer operates at the Southern Great Plains atmospheric observatory on a partly cloudy day.
The ice nucleation spectrometer, seen here at ARM’s Southern Great Plains atmospheric observatory, measures the number concentration of ice-nucleating particles. Photo is by Chris Martin, ARM.

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility now provides routine data sets on ice-nucleating particles (INPs) from the third ARM Mobile Facility (AMF3) at Oliktok Point, Alaska, and from the Southern Great Plains (SGP) atmospheric observatory.

These are the first routine INP data available through ARM for users to access for observational and modeling investigations.

ARM INP mentors Jessie Creamean and Tom Hill and technician Carson Hume—all from Colorado State University—are responsible for the new INP data sets.

INP data are obtained from filter collections of aerosols at each site, followed by processing on the ice nucleation spectrometer at Colorado State University. These data include cumulative INP concentration spectra over a freezing temperature range down to approximately minus 29 degrees Celsius for total INPs and, for a subset of the samples, heat-labile (e.g., proteinaceous) INPs, organic INPs, and inorganic INPs.

INP data are available from August 20, 2020, to June 2, 2021, from AMF3, which has since left Oliktok, and from October 19 to December 29, 2020, from the SGP.

Continuous filter collections and processing of INP data are ongoing at the SGP. Data after December 29, 2020, from the SGP will soon be available from the ARM Data Center.

Access the INP concentration data from the ARM Data Center. (Go here to create an account to download the data.)

For more information about the ice nucleation spectrometer, see the instrument web page and instrument handbook.

Please contact Creamean and Hill with questions or comments about the data.

To cite the data, please use doi:10.5439/1770816.

More INP Data Coming Soon

Since August 20, 2021, routine filter collections have been ongoing for the 21-month Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL) campaign near Crested Butte, Colorado.

On June 1, 2022, routine filter collections will start in La Porte and Guy, Texas, for the four-month intensive operational period of the TRacking Aerosol Convection interactions ExpeRiment (TRACER).

INP data from TRACER and SAIL are expected to be available at the end of 2022.

Looking to future ARM deployments, INP data will be available from the yearlong Eastern Pacific Cloud Aerosol Precipitation Experiment (EPCAPE), which starts February 15, 2023, in northern San Diego, California. INP data will also be available from AMF3 after it starts operations in the Southeastern United States around September 2023.

Check back with the ARM Data Center for data availability from current and future sites.

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ARM is a DOE Office of Science user facility operated by nine DOE national laboratories.