2012, Engler, C., Birmili, W., Spindler, G., Wiedensohler, A.

Five years of PM10 and PM2.5 ambient air measurements at a roadside, an urban, and a regional background site in Leipzig (Germany) were analyzed for violations of the legal PM10 limit value (EC, 1999). The annual mean PM10 concentrations at the three sites were well below the legal threshold of 40 μg m−3 (32.6, 22.0 and 21.7 μg m−3, respectively). At roadside, the daily maximum value of 50 μg m−3 was exceeded on 232 days (13% of all days) in 2005–2009, which led to a violation of the EC directive in three out of five years. We analysed the meteorological factors and local source contributions that eventually led to the exceedances of the daily limit value. As noted in other urban environments before, most exceedance days were observed in the cold season. Exceedance days were most probable under synoptic situations characterised by stagnant winds, low temperatures and strong temperature inversions in winter time. However, these extreme situations accounted for only less than half of the exeedance days. We also noticed a significant number of exceedance days that occurred in the cold season under south-westerly winds, and in the warm season in the presence of easterly winds. Our analysis suggests that local as well as regional sources of PM are equally responsible for exceedances days at the roadside site. The conclusion is that a combined effort of local, national and international reduction measures appears most likely to avoid systematic exceedances of the daily limit value in the future.

2007, Engler, C., Rose, D., Wehner, B., Wiedensohler, A., Brüggemann, E., Gnauk, T., Spindler, G., Tuch, T., Birmili, W.

Atmospheric aerosol particle size distributions at a continental background site in Eastern Germany were examined for a one-year period. Particles were classified using a twin differential mobility particle sizer in a size range between 3 and 800 nm. As a novelty, every second measurement of this experiment involved the removal of volatile chemical compounds in a thermodenuder at 300°C. This concept allowed to quantify the number size distribution of non-volatile particle cores – primarily associated with elemental carbon, and to compare this to the original non-conditioned size distribution. As a byproduct of the volatility analysis, new particles originating from nucleation inside the thermodenuder can be observed, however, overwhelmingly at diameters below 6 nm. Within the measurement uncertainty, every particle down to particle sizes of 15 nm is concluded to contain a non-volatile core. The volume fraction of non-volatile particulate matter (non-conditioned diameter < 800 nm) varied between 10 and 30% and was largely consistent with the experimentally determined mass fraction of elemental carbon. The average size of the non-volatile particle cores was estimated as a function of original non-conditioned size using a summation method, which showed that larger particles (>200 nm) contained more non-volatile compounds than smaller particles (<50 nm), thus indicating a significantly different chemical composition. Two alternative air mass classification schemes based on either, synoptic chart analysis (Berliner Wetterkarte) or back trajectories showed that the volume and number fraction of non-volatile cores depended less on air mass than the total particle number concentration. In all air masses, the non-volatile size distributions showed a more and a less volatile ("soot") mode, the latter being located at about 50 nm. During unstable conditions and in maritime air masses, smaller values were observed compared to stable or continental conditions. This reflects the significant emission of non-volatile material over the continent and, depending on atmospheric stratification, increased concentrations at ground level.

2006, Rose, D., Wehner, B., Ketzel, M., Engler, C., Voigtländer, J., Tuch, T., Wiedensohler, A.

Number fractions of externally mixed particles of four different sizes (30, 50, 80, and 150 nm in diameter) were measured using a Volatility Tandem DMA. The system was operated in a street canyon (Eisenbahnstrasse, EI) and at an urban background site (Institute for Tropospheric Research, IfT), both in the city of Leipzig, Germany as well as at a rural site (Melpitz (ME), a village near Leipzig). Intensive campaigns of 3–5 weeks each took place in summer 2003 as well as in winter 2003/04. The data set thus obtained provides mean number fractions of externally mixed soot particles of atmospheric aerosols in differently polluted areas and different seasons (e.g. at 80 nm on working days, 60% (EI), 22% (IfT), and 6% (ME) in summer and 26% (IfT), and 13% (ME) in winter). Furthermore, a new method is used to calculate the size distribution of these externally mixed soot particles from parallel number size distribution measurements. A decrease of the externally mixed soot fraction with decreasing urbanity and a diurnal variation linked to the daily traffic changes demonstrate, that the traffic emissions have a significant impact on the soot fraction in urban areas. This influence becomes less in rural areas, due to atmospheric mixing and transformation processes. For estimating the source strength of soot particles emitted by vehicles (veh), soot particle emission factors were calculated using the Operational Street Pollution Model (OSPM). The emission factor for an average vehicle was found to be (1.5±0.4)·1014 #(km·veh). The separation of the emission factor into passenger cars ((5.8±2)·1013} #(km·veh)) and trucks ((2.5±0.9)·1015 #(km·veh)) yielded in a 40-times higher emission factor for trucks compared to passenger cars.

2018, Weger, M., Heinold, B., Engler, C., Schumann, U., Seifert, A., Fößig, R., Voigt, C., Baars, H., Blahak, U., Borrmann, S., Hoose, C., Kaufmann, S., Krämer, M., Seifert, P., Senf, F., Schneider, J., Tegen, I.

A regional modeling study on the impact of desert dust on cloud formation is presented for a major Saharan dust outbreak over Europe from 2 to 5 April 2014. The dust event coincided with an extensive and dense cirrus cloud layer, suggesting an influence of dust on atmospheric ice nucleation. Using interactive simulation with the regional dust model COSMO-MUSCAT, we investigate cloud and precipitation representation in the model and test the sensitivity of cloud parameters to dust-cloud and dust-radiation interactions of the simulated dust plume. We evaluate model results with ground-based and spaceborne remote sensing measurements of aerosol and cloud properties, as well as the in situ measurements obtained during the ML-CIRRUS aircraft campaign. A run of the model with single-moment bulk microphysics without online dust feedback considerably underestimated cirrus cloud cover over Germany in the comparison with infrared satellite imagery. This was also reflected in simulated upper-Tropospheric ice water content (IWC), which accounted for only 20 % of the observed values. The interactive dust simulation with COSMO-MUSCAT, including a two-moment bulk microphysics scheme and dust-cloud as well as dust-radiation feedback, in contrast, led to significant improvements. The modeled cirrus cloud cover and IWC were by at least a factor of 2 higher in the relevant altitudes compared to the noninteractive model run. We attributed these improvements mainly to enhanced deposition freezing in response to the high mineral dust concentrations. This was corroborated further in a significant decrease in ice particle radii towards more realistic values, compared to in situ measurements from the ML-CIRRUS aircraft campaign. By testing different empirical ice nucleation parameterizations, we further demonstrate that remaining uncertainties in the ice-nucleating properties of mineral dust affect the model performance at least as significantly as including the online representation of the mineral dust distribution. Dust-radiation interactions played a secondary role for cirrus cloud formation, but contributed to a more realistic representation of precipitation by suppressing moist convection in southern Germany. In addition, a too-low specific humidity in the 7 to 10 km altitude range in the boundary conditions was identified as one of the main reasons for misrepresentation of cirrus clouds in this model study.

2015, Hande, L.B., Engler, C., Hoose, C., Tegen, I.

Dust aerosols are thought to be the main contributor to atmospheric ice nucleation. While there are case studies supporting this, a climatological sense of the importance of dust to atmospheric ice nucleating particle (INP) concentrations and its seasonal variability over Europe is lacking. Here, we use a mesoscale model to estimate Saharan dust concentrations over Europe in 2008. There are large differences in median dust concentrations between seasons, with the highest concentrations and highest variability in the lower to mid-troposphere. Laboratory-based ice nucleation parameterisations are applied to these simulated dust number concentrations to calculate the potential INP resulting from immersion freezing and deposition nucleation on these dust particles. The potential INP concentrations increase exponentially with height due to decreasing temperatures in the lower and mid-troposphere. When the ice-activated fraction increases sufficiently, INP concentrations follow the dust particle concentrations. The potential INP profiles exhibit similarly large differences between seasons, with the highest concentrations in spring (median potential immersion INP concentrations nearly 105 m−3, median potential deposition INP concentrations at 120% relative humidity with respect to ice over 105 m−3), about an order of magnitude larger than those in summer. Using these results, a best-fit function is provided to estimate the potential INPs for use in limited-area models, which is representative of the normal background INP concentrations over Europe. A statistical evaluation of the results against field and laboratory measurements indicates that the INP concentrations are in close agreement with observations.

2017, Hyvärinen, A.-P., Komppula, M., Engler, C., Kivekäs, N., Kerminen, V.-M., Dal Maso, M., Viisanen, Y., Lihavainen, H.

Nearly 3 yr (March 2003–December 2005) of continuous particle number size distribution measurements have been conducted at the island of Ut¨o in the Baltic Sea. The measured particle size range was from 7 to 530 nm. During the measurement period, a total of 103 regional new-particle formation events were observed. The characteristics of the nucleation events at Ut¨o were similar to those reported in the literature in other Nordic sites, though measured condensation sinks were rather high (geometric mean of 3.8 × 10−3 s−1) during event days. Clear evidence was found that new particles nucleate regionally near Ut¨o, rather than are transported from greater distances. However, the Baltic Sea seems to have an inhibiting effect on new-particle formation. The boreal forest areas in the continental Finland were found to have an enhancing effect on the nucleation probability in Ut¨o, suggesting that at least some of the precursor gases for nucleation and/or condensational growth of particles originate from these forests. In addition to regional new-particle formation events, a total of 94 local events were observed in Ut¨o. These are short-lived events with a small footprint area, and can at least partly be tracked down to the emissions of ship traffic operating at Ut¨o.