The effect of nitric acid on heterogeneous sulphate production in maritime stratiform clouds.

摘要

Aerosol cloud interactions still remain one of the least understood areas of climate change related processes.Aerosols effect the size and number of cloud droplets,which in turn effect the cloud's albedo and thus alter the Earth's radiation budget.Since oceans cover over 70% of the Earth's surface and are a large source of aerosols it is important to understand how aerosols in such environments interact with clouds.O'Dowd et al.(2000) developed a size-resolved droplet physico chemical model linked to a Lagrangian parcel framework to study sulphate production in maritime stratiform clouds.Their simulations showed a distribution of sulphate production across the aerosol size range that was non linear and that a significant fraction ( 75-90%) of the sulphate was produced in droplets formed on sea-salt aerosol particles.The current work is a further development of this model.The thermodynamics in the model were altered to include nitric acid and the effect on sulphate production in sea-salt particles investigated.