THE INFLUENCE OF AEROSOL-PARTICLE COMPOSITION ON CLOUD DROPLET FORMATION

A difference in partitioning between cloud droplets and interstitial air for two chemical species (elemental carbon and sulphur) with different expected behaviour in nucleation scavenging was observed in clouds at Mt. Kleiner Feldberg (825 m asl), near Frankfurt, Germany. The fraction of sulphur incorporated in cloud droplets was always higher than the fraction of elemental carbon. This difference in partitioning has also been observed in fog but under different pollution conditions in the Po Valley, Italy. Both these studies were based on bulk samples. In the present study at Kleiner Feldberg, impactor samples of the particles in the interstitial air and the cloud droplet residuals were taken and a single particle analysis was done on the samples. It was found that, for a given particle size, the majority of particles forming cloud droplets were soluble and that insoluble particles preferentially remained in the interstitial air.